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Winners of the Early Career Conservation Award 2025
This year, the Selection Committee was faced with an exceptional pool of candidates, and two individuals stood out equally for their accomplishments. In recognition of this, the Selection Committee decided
to present the award to both candidates independently and in full, with each of them receiving the award in their own right.
The 2025 Early Career Conservation Award recipients are Dr Hanna Pettersson, University of York UK, and Dr Volen Arkumarev, Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB) / BirdLife Bulgaria.
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Dr
Volen Arkumarev is a Bulgarian conservation biologist with over 16 years of experience in
raptor research and conservation. He holds a PhD (University of Plovdiv) on the spatial ecology of Griffon Vultures and currently serves as Project Manager of the LIFE for Falcons project and Coordinator of the Egyptian Vulture restocking program in
Bulgaria. He is a member of the IUCN Vulture Specialist Group and, since2024, Editor-in-Chief of its journal Vulture News. As Flyway Conservation Officer under the Egyptian Vulture New LIFE project, he led the development of a methodology that mapped mortality
risks across three continents. He also pioneered the evaluation of restocking methods (hacking, fostering, delayed release) for Egyptian Vultures in the Balkans, with findings now applied in practice and shared internationally through training programs he
led. Volen’s conservation work is a brilliant example on how to integrate science, policy, and practice, grounded in innovation, evidence, and collaboration.
SCB Europe is delighted to present the 2025 Early Career Conservation Award to Dr Volen Arkumarev for his extraordinary contributions to raptor conservation across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
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Dr
Hanna Pettersson is the emerging expert in
human-wildlife interactions, with a focus on the preconditions that enable coexistence. Her PhD (University of Leeds) explored the dynamics between expanding wolf populations, managing authorities and rural communities in northern Spain. She serves on
a wolf conflict mediation panel in Spain and is an external advisor to an EU Horizon project on co-creating coexistence. At the University of York, her current project builds on her previous work, expanding it to explore an Incentive Payment Scheme in northern
Sweden. Her project adopts a transdisciplinary approach to evaluate the implementation of a new monitoring method for wolverines, its effect on the payment scheme, and its role in promoting trust and justice in carnivore management. She aims to combine her
case studies in wildlife management with those on conflicts and just transitions in other systems, and to contribute to ongoing efforts by IPBES, the IUCN and others to embed social science into the development of coexistence programs.
SCB Europe is delighted to present the 2025 Early Career Conservation Award to Dr Hanna Pettersson, the leading early-career researcher in the field of human–carnivore coexistence and the design of effective
coexistence programs.
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SCB Europe has joined Bluesky
SCB Europe is now on Bluesky (@scbeurope.bsky.social)!
Follow us to get updates on latest conservation research about Europe, events for conservation professionals and to get involved in the work we do for biodiversity at different fronts.
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