Fredrick Kioko Kilonzo is a 25-year-old conservation leader from Kenya, and the Founder and Species and Sites Program Manager of NatureHub Collective Community Organisation. Shaped by the ecological wisdom of his community and his grandmother, Fredrick built NatureHub into a multi-landscape conservation force managing over $150,000 across 15+ international partnerships spanning coastal mangrove restoration, Taita Hills endemic species, Laikipia wildlife conservation, and Mount Kenya herpetofauna.
His flagship Kidongo Mangrove Restoration Initiative at Mtwapa Creek has planted over 103,000 mangrove seedlings with a 97% survival rate, while transforming the daily incomes of 15 marginalized women from $3 to $15 through the Mangrove Gold beekeeping enterprise. Fredrick is currently an A.G. Leventis African Biodiversity Fellow at the University of Oxford ICCS, and has been recognized through the TIAW World of Difference Award 2025, Commonwealth Youth Award 2025 Africa Regional Finalist, Marion Paviour Award 2024, and Bow Seat True Blue Fellowship 2025.
Scaling the Mangrove Gold Model: Community-Led Coastal Restoration and Enterprise Development at Mtwapa Creek and Beyond
Fredrick’s project will support the next transformative phase of NatureHub Collective’s community-led coastal restoration work through the Somaha Biodiversity Fellowship — scaling the proven Mangrove Gold model from a 20,000-tree Conservation Nation-funded pilot into a replicable movement reaching three additional marginalized coastal communities along Kenya’s coast, including Gazi Bay on the South Coast.
The fellowship will fund three interconnected pillars: planting 50,000 new mangrove seedlings across 12.5 hectares at three new sites, training 45 additional women in apiculture, hive management, honey harvesting, and conservation enterprise development with 25 new beehives installed, and the open-source public release of Mazingira360 — a web-based geospatial monitoring platform that any coastal community worldwide can use freely to GPS-tag seedlings, track survival rates, document biodiversity, and report to funders. When communities lead conservation and own its benefits, both people and ecosystems thrive.