Maggie Muurmans

Maggie Muurmans won the Future for Nature award in 2009. At the time, her conservation work focused on sea turtle conservation in Indonesia where in 2006, she set up Yayasan Pulau Banyak, a unique ongoing sea turtle conservation and monitoring programme in Sumatra. The project included eco-tourism development, poverty alleviation projects and environmental education. Together with the local community, she managed to completely stop the poaching of turtle eggs. Yayasan Pulau Banyak received additional funding and new partnerships after Maggie won the Future For Nature Award. After seven years of working with the communities in Indonesia, the Yayasan Pulau Banyak project had grown into a sustainable enterprise entirely run by local people and supported by government organisations.

Maggie has since left Yayasan Pulau Banyak –handing over the project to the local community– to continue her conservation work with coastal communities in Australia and the Pacific. Maggie currently holds a seasonal lecturer position at the University of Queensland, works towards koala conservation in the Queensland government, whilst conducting a PhD on community engagement for nature conservation for small communities in a developing country context.

Her role within the QLD Department of Environment Science and Innovation sits in the section of Wildlife and Threatened Species Operations and primarily focuses on community engagement, citizen science and education activities as part of the Southeast Queensland Koala Conservation Strategy. Maggie’s work includes the development of a framework to improve collaboration between governments on the local and state level, while also incorporating the use of citizen science. One of her major achievements is driving the overhaul of the QWildlife app, a platform where people can report sightings of koalas and their condition.

When she joined the project, the app had only registered 24 sightings, but due to Maggie’s engagement and promotion efforts, this number increased to over 1000 sightings per month at its peak. More information can be found here.

Maggie has also created free educational material and teacher packs that help bring the message of the SEQ strategy in line with the national curriculum for both primary and secondary schools and co-founded Ocean Connect Inc., a non-profit organisation that focuses on environmental education and citizen science for the Gold Coast marine environment. For her own NGO, she also launched successful citizen science projects such as seagrass watch, mangrove acoustic monitoring and sea slug survey. Maggie says, “It’s a powerful tool to engage people who don’t necessarily identify with the scientific field but would like to contribute to create impact.”

Background

Maggie was inspired by British naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell. She started her career at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation trust in Jersey, where she worked as a mammal keeper; looking after primates, bears and bats.

She then traded her captive management experience for field work and started work as a research assistant with sea turtles in Costa Rica. Afterwards, she worked as research coordinator and project coordinator for a British organisation in Nicaragua, and helped set up management plans and sea turtle projects in 3 protected nature reserves in the Northwest of the country. She conducted biodiversity surveys in areas without knowledge of its flora and fauna and identified biodiversity new to the existing species list.

Maggie’s work towards conservation and environmental work was awarded by the internationally acknowledged Future for Nature award in 2009 (given to her by David Attenborough) and the Woman of the Earth award in 2011. She also received the Griffith University’s vice chancellor award for excellence in community engagement and service in 2018.

Her experience extends to developing and delivering environmental education programmes in developing countries as well as teaching primary, secondary and tertiary students in the UK, Malaysia, Vanuatu and Australia. Maggie currently holds a seasonal lecturer position at the University of Queensland, works towards koala conservation in the QLD government, whilst conducting a PhD on community engagement for nature conservation for small communities in a developing country context.

She also co-founded Ocean Connect Incorporated. A non-profit organisation that focuses on environmental education and citizen science for the Gold Coast marine environment.

Vision and Approach

Maggie centres her conservation efforts in community engagement, citizen science and education activities as demonstrated in her work for the QLD Department of Environment Science and Innovation, and her own NGO Ocean Connect Incorporated. When Maggie set up Yayasan Pulau Banyak, sea turtles were facing habitat and nesting site destruction, by-catch, illegal trade, and unsustainable exploitation. Due to close collaboration with the local villagers of Pulau Banyak, sea turtle conservation received full community support. Maggie combined beach patrols, environmental awareness campaigns, and turtle-friendly income opportunities for locals to curb local poaching of sea turtle eggs. Her project also provided the necessary education and tools to make ecotourism a suitable economic alternative to poaching. As a result, turtle egg poaching stopped, and the area has seen an increasing number of tourists who visit the project.

“The Future For Nature Award Crowned my conservation efforts in three different continents and provided international media exposure and acknowledgement for the project. This resulted in additional funding and partnerships. On top of that, I had the exceptional good fortune of meeting Sir David Attenborough, who has inspired so many people to conserve our natural environment.”
Maggie Muurmans

Impact of the Future For Nature Award

Yayasan Pulau Banyak received additional funding and new partnerships after Maggie won the Future For Nature Award.
Maggie has since received additional awards and recognition for her community engagement efforts.
Through the Future For Nature Family network, Maggie created collaborations and partnerships with other FFN winners working towards similar goals.

"Maggie Muurmans has used her leadership skills to empower Indonesian local populations and strengthen existing local organizations in focusing on the conservation issues of sea turtles and coastal ecology. This strong emphasis on sustainability, building skills and leadership for conservation, is the only approach that will effectively have long-term impact.''
Ms. Annette Lanjouw, International Selection Committee