Nyawira A. Muthiga is an African conservation zoologist who is Director of the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association Marine Programme in

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. She is a conservation scientist for the

Wildlife Conservation Society The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is a non-governmental organization headquartered at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, that aims to conserve the world's largest wild places in 14 priority regions. Founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological ...

Early life and education

Muthiga was born in

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, and spent part of her childhood in Dar es Salaam. She earned her undergraduate degree in biological oceanography in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. She completed her master's degree at the Florida State University, where she studied the impact of salinity on the photosynthesis of '' Siderastrea siderea''. Muthiga returned to Kenya for her doctoral research, where she joined the

University of Nairobi The University of Nairobi (uonbi or UoN; ) is a collegiate research university based in Nairobi. It is the largest university in Kenya. Although its history as an educational institution dates back to 1956, it did not become an independent univer ...

Research and career

In 2000 Muthiga was elected President of the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association Board of Trustees (WIOMSA). She oversaw the growth of the WIMOSA internationally, building local chapters and networks. Muthiga worked for the

Kenya Wildlife Service Kenya Wildlife Service is a state corporation under the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife established by an act of Parliament; Wildlife Conservation and Management Act CAP 376, of 1989, now repealed and replaced by the Wildlife Conservation and Ma ...

where she led the coastal and wetland programme. In this capacity, Muthiga was made of Chair of the Kenya Sea Turtle Conservation programme. She has worked to survey hundreds of different coral reefs on the Western Indian Ocean. Muthiga was a founder of the

coral reef A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. C ...

programme, which researches and deploys programmes that can conserve coral reefs, as well as identifying novel ways to allow critical species to recover. The programme helps to protect 90% of the world's coral species and has surveyed almost 1,000 sites across the Indo-Pacific and

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

. In 2007 Muthiga joined the

World Commission on Protected Areas The World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) is one of six commissions of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). History In 1948, the IUCN established a Committee on National Parks. Two decades later the IUCN had been ask ...

as the Kenya coordinator. She has argued that to preserve coral reefs, social and environmental scientists must work together. She believes that the orange-lined triggerfish may play a crucial role in maintaining health corals. Muthiga was awarded the 2018 Banovich Wildscapes Foundation Award for Conservation Excellence (ACE) for her work on ocean conservation. In 2020 Eco Magazine named Muthiga as one of the world's top coral reef researchers.

Awards and honours

* 2005 National Geographic Society/Buffett Award for Leadership * 2018 Award for Conservation Excellence * 2020 Eco Magazine Top Coral Reef Researcher * 2020 Coral Reef Conservation Award

Personal life

Muthiga is married to American

marine biologist Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifi ...

Timothy McClanahan. She met him in the 1980s, when McClanahan was on a study-abroad programme in Kenya.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Muthiga, Nyawira Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Women conservationists 21st-century Kenyan women scientists 21st-century Kenyan scientists University of Nairobi alumni Florida State University alumni