Zuzana Buřivalová

Zuzana Buřivalová is a tropical forest conservation scientist whose work is dedicated to giving biodiversity a voice in the decisions that shape its future. As an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the principal investigator of the Sound Forest Lab, she develops bioacoustic methods to measure the health of tropical forests in places and at scales where traditional approaches fail.

Intact tropical forests, inhabited by thousands of species of frogs, birds, invertebrates and mammals, sound radically different from ones that have been emptied through hunting, logging or climate change. By recording and analyzing these soundscapes, her lab checks the pulse of some of the world’s most remote and understudied ecosystems, and translates what it hears into evidence that communities, governments and conservation organizations can use.

She leads the Soundscape Baselines Project: the first systematic effort to create acoustic “time capsules” of the world’s most intact forests. She co-founded and leads the “Conservation Effectiveness” initiative with Mongabay, bringing evidence on what works and what doesn’t in forest conservation closer to decision-makers.

Zuzana grew up in a forested village in the Czech Republic and has carried a lifelong connection to forests through fieldwork in Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Gabon, Peru and Ecuador. She holds degrees from Oxford University and ETH Zurich, and did a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University and The Nature Conservancy. She is the 2021 winner of the Nature Award for Driving Global Impact and the 2023 WINGS Women of Discovery Award.