British ecologist Professor Thomas Crowther has been named as the newest winner of the Rachel Carson Environmental Conservation Excellence Award.
The prize is part of the Applied Microbiology International Horizon Awards 2025, which celebrate the brightest minds in the field and promote the research, group, projects, products and individuals who continue to help shape the future of applied microbiology.
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The Rachel Carson Environmental Conservation Excellence Award is designed for professionals, researchers, and innovators who have made significant contributions to the conservation of marine and terrestrial ecosystems and the preservation of biodiversity. It honours their efforts in addressing critical environmental challenges and safeguarding natural habitats, emphasising the real-world impacts in these essential areas.
The forces that shape biodiversity
Professor Thomas Ward Crowther is a British ecologist, focussed on understanding the forces that shape biodiversity at a global scale.
He is the founder of the Crowther Lab, an international network of research groups exploring the role of biodiversity in regulating the Earth’s climate and human wellbeing.
In 2020 he founded Restor.eco, an online platform that supports hundreds of thousands of community-led restoration projects around the world. By democratizing access to data and financing, this platform facilitates local biodiversity protection initiatives to enhance the wellbeing of local people. Collectively, this global network of projects is supporting the recovery of healthy soils and vegetation across 160 million hectares of land. Crowther was the founding co-chair of the Advisory Board for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which aims to facilitate ecological recovery at a global scale, and in 2021, the World Economic Forum named Crowther a Young Global Leader for his efforts to protect biodiversity across the globe.
Incredible global community
“I am deeply honoured to receive the Rachel Carson Environmental Conservation Excellence Award,” he said.
“This recognition reflects the incredible global community of practitioners and scientists in the Restor.eco network, who are working to protect and restore the biodiversity that we all depend on. I’m extremely grateful that this award can shine a spotlight on this vital work.”
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