The Wildcast Episode 10
Hana Raza Conservation Warrior of Iraqi Kurdistan
I met Hana in 2013 as a member of the US International Visitor Leadership program- this is a program that of the US government for emerging leaders around the world. She has the distinction of being one of the first people to rediscover the Persian Leopard in Iraq, an animal thought to have been extinct in most of Persia. She is Kurdish Iraqi and she discusses the life she and her family has lived growing up in a country of constant war. She was born in a Peshmarga camp and as a baby was a victim of chemical weapons dropped on that camp by Saddam Hussein's government -she still bears the scars from that episode of her life. It is hard to imagine the difficulty of the work that she does here in a conflict zone where as a Muslim woman it is not in their culture to be doing the work that she does not to mention having to navigate actual mine fields and civil war, and still having to find the time to write grants to keep the work going. Listen to her story and feel her passion through her own words. She is someone i've looked up to as an inspirational person from the very first time i met her and that continues even more so today.
You can find Hana on the following social channels:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hana.A.Raza
Instagram: @hanaraza
Twitter: @HanaRaza
You can also find more about her work at:
Website Nature Iraq: http://www.natureiraq.org/persian-leopard-conservation.html
Youtube:
https://youtu.be/VL3CPek3as0
https://youtu.be/X7IDEE-R--Y
https://vimeo.com/187361230
