Dr Bernard Coetzee has been named on The Explorers Club 50 Class of 2025, an honour recognising people changing the world through science, exploration and conservation.
Pretoria, South Africa (24 June 2025) – In a quietly powerful moment for South African science and conservation, Dr Bernard Coetzee, senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria, has been named to The Explorers Club 50 Class of 2025, a global honour recognising 50 people who are “changing the world that the world needs to know about.” It’s the kind of spotlight that doesn’t seek attention, but rather earns it, through tireless fieldwork, deep empathy, and a calling far beyond the academic lecture halls.
The Explorers Club, founded in 1904, is home to the world’s most intrepid minds, from the first humans to summit Everest to the pioneers who ventured beneath oceans and into space. To be listed among its annual class of changemakers is not just a badge of honour, but an invitation to connection. For Dr Coetzee, that’s what matters most.
“I see it as a connection platform in an increasingly disconnected world,” he reflects.
Dr Coetzee’s journey into academia is anything but typical. While he holds all the scientific credentials one would expect, postgraduate degrees, published research, and major grants, it’s his hands-on experience in conservation NGOs, both big and small, that gives his work its unique character. His aim? Science that moves off the page and into policy, into action, into protecting what matters most, biodiversity, and the people who live alongside it.
That mission has taken him from Africa to Antarctica. From studying the biological effects of artificial light on mosquitoes to grappling with the nuanced realities of human-elephant coexistence in Southern Africa, his work is as broad as it is deeply rooted in impact.
“My interests have always been broad and not necessarily tied to specific organisms,” he explains. “In general, I focus on the drivers of biodiversity loss, and how we are changing the night-time environment, especially through light pollution.”
It’s this boundary-pushing approach, exploring everything from the micro-world of insects to the massive movements of elephants, that caught the attention of The Explorers Club. But Dr Coetzee is quick to turn that spotlight outward.
“The fates of humanity and biodiversity are inextricably linked,” he says. “That should be enough to make us all care.”
At the Conservation Ecology Research Unit at UP, he’s found a space where that philosophy can thrive. With support from initiatives like the Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Research Grant, Dr Coetzee and his team are pushing the boundaries of what conservation can look like, inclusive, globally aware, and deeply committed to real-world outcomes.
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This Grade 2 Teacher Is Running Her Socks Off for Vrygrond's Pets!His current work looks at elephants, not just as iconic symbols of Africa, but as keystone species whose roles in the ecosystem are still not fully understood.
“From a conservation perspective, elephants in Southern Africa are doing well, but this is not the case elsewhere in the world. All three species are in danger of extinction,” he says. “Much of our work is to understand their functional roles in systems, rather than play an archaic game of ‘how many are too many’.”
There’s something quietly poetic about a South African ecologist being recognised alongside polar explorers and astronauts. Dr Coetzee may not be scaling peaks or orbiting planets, but he is venturing into some of the most urgent terrain of our time: how we live alongside the natural world.
His story is a reminder that exploration isn’t always about going further; sometimes it’s about digging deeper, about noticing more. About asking what our shared future might look like if we choose connection over conflict, science over silence, and purpose over prestige.
And if that isn’t the spirit of exploration, what is?
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