Zuzana Buřivalová wins UCLA’s 10th annual Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award

Growing up in the Czech Republic, Zuzana Buřivalová first realized the beauty of biodiversity when she observed salamanders in the protected forests north of her village - and its flip-side fragility when she saw the ravages of unsustainable logging to the south.

Dedicating herself to monitoring and protecting biodiversity ever since, Buřivalová is now a conservation scientist who uses bioacoustics methods to measure the health of tropical forests around the globe.

And, on Oct. 8, she was named the 10th winner of the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award by the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

She earned the $100,000 prize for her work recording and analyzing the soundscapes of understudied ecosystems and translating this data into actionable evidence for use by conservationists, officials and communities.

"I work to give voice to tropical forest biodiversity so that it can be considered in decisions that shape its future," Buřivalová said. "This is urgent: Deforestation is slowing, but tropical biodiversity loss - through forest degradation, climate change and overhunting - is not. Even some natural climate solutions implemented in forests result in biodiversity loss, through their sole focus on carbon."

An associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the principal investigator of the Sound Forest Lab, Buřivalová has conducted fieldwork around the world, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Peru and Ecuador, where she's pioneered the application of bioacoustics in remote tropical forests.

These areas are typically avoided, since they're hard to access and little baseline data exists, but that never stopped Buřivalová, who hiked for days off-trail in Madagascar to check on biodiversity in rainforest sites that were protected on paper but showed signs of degradation on satellite images.

"I returned with trench foot but a strong sense of determination, because after witnessing this extreme effort, village elders finally shared what truly was the conservation problem," she said. "I spent hundreds of hours building a sound type library for a single day of Borneo soundscape to represent every vocalizing organism.

"Most bioacoustics conservation work focuses on a single taxonomic group, typically birds. I record and analyze the whole soundscape, including frogs, insects, mammals and birds together, because biodiversity cannot be reduced to the most studied species."

Her bioacoustics metrics and baselines were also able to provide Gabon's Massaha community with government-required scientific evidence on the unique biodiversity within its ancestral forest. Because of this evidence, the Massaha were able to stop proposed logging and create the country's first community-conserved area.

"The community's drive and persistence saved the forest, and my data and expertise enabled them to unlock a crucial step toward formal protection," Buřivalová said. "This reflects exactly how I see my role: an enabler of conservation through giving biodiversity a voice."

Buřivalová also leads the Soundscape Baselines Project, an initiative to create acoustic time capsules of the world's most intact forests as soon as possible, as well as the Conservation Effectiveness Initiative, an open platform used by organizations like the World Wildlife Fund to better understand which conservation strategies are working and which aren't - and why.

After thanking the award organizers, supporters, community and her fellow finalists and nominees, Buřivalová closed her acceptance speech with a heartfelt reminder.

"The forests of the world are very unique places. They sound different. They look different. They smell different. They have different meanings for the communities who work really hard to protect them," she said. "I invite everyone to think about this amazing diversity of forests and ecosystems we have on this planet, and to work together to protect them."

[Press the play button to watch the video. An audio-described version is available through the YouTube link.]

Celebrating its 10th installment, the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award is the first major U.S. prize dedicated to spotlighting next-generation environmental leaders who are under 40. The 2026 cycle drew 15 nominees from around the world, each submitted by a network of distinguished experts, including environmental scientists, conservationists, journalists, researchers, academics and other leaders.

In addition to Buřivalová's prize, the event celebrated the hundreds of members of the growing Pritzker Award community, including this year's finalists Doris Njagi and Suzanne Pierre, who received $15,000 each.

Endowed by the Anthony Pritzker Family Foundation, the award offers more than funding to rising innovators - it provides a vital network and launching pad.

"I look around the room, and there are so many people here who are so committed to making a difference in the world and so committed to making sure that we preserve the terrific environment that we've been lucky enough to inherit," said philanthropist Tony Pritzker. "We want to honor the youthful enthusiasm that our finalists and entire community have brought to each of their efforts; the ultimate idea is to open doors so that they can get more things done."

Ultimately, the award and its global reach reflect the mission of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, which seeks to translate science into real-world action.

"The Pritzker Award exemplifies something at the heart of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability's mission: the pursuit of transformative knowledge and the willingness to cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries to put that knowledge to work," said Alex Hall, the institute's director.

"The history of the Pritzker Award gives me reason for so much optimism. It reminds us that the future doesn't just happen - it's something we shape through the people we invest in and the institutions we build. This past decade has given us living proof that extraordinary people, supported by a remarkable community, can shape what happens next."