Vu Thi Quyen, Vietnam

It

took Vu Thi Quyen more than two years of lobbying and paperwork to convince Vietnam's government to legalize Education for Nature-Vietnam (ENV), the country's first homegrown environmental group. Bureaucrats had no objection to Quyen's plan to teach public-school students about Vietnam's rare and endangered species. The problem, Quyen says, was that at age 25, she wasn't so long out of school herself. Environmental enthusiasts co-sponsoring the group were even younger, and that didn't go down well in a communist state where seniority counts and youthful feistiness isn't necessarily prized. "It was very difficult because we were very young," says Quyen. "None of us were doctors or professors or those kinds of people. We didn't have a history of working with the government."

Since ENV was finally legitimized in 2002, it has proved its mettle. The group's Conservation Awareness Program established "conservation clubs" in 50 Vietnamese schools and taught some 100,000 children about the country's wildlife. It has trained rangers in 30 national parks to set up school programs on local endangered species. Vietnamese pop star My Linh appeared in a 2004 ENV television commercial urging people not to consume bear-bile tonic, which is extracted from the stomachs of trapped bears using steel catheters. This year, ENV set up a national wildlife-trafficking hotline for people to report poaching and restaurants serving endangered species. The staff has expanded to 22. "At the moment, I'm the oldest person in the organization," laughs Quyen, now 31.

In Vietnam, conservation is itself a young idea. After decades of war and isolation, the country opened its jungles up to foreign environmentalists in the 1990s, and it soon became known as a hotspot for unique species on the brink of extinction. One of the rarest is the golden-headed langur. Found on Cat Ba Island in northern Vietnam, this cliff-dwelling monkey has a population of less than 100.

Quyen fell in love with her country's wildlife almost by accident. In 1996, after graduating from university with a geography degree, she took a summer job in Cuc Phuong National Park with the NGO Fauna & Flora International. She was put in charge of educating villagers to respect the park's wildlife, rather than hunt it. But by 2000, Quyen began planning a Vietnamese conservation group that could make the nation more self-reliant. "We can't expect foreigners to come and save our country," she says. "The work should be done by Vietnamese."

The greatest reward, says Quyen, comes from winning the hearts and minds of young nature lovers—especially kids who have convinced their own parents to stop hunting endangered species. "Education makes a difference," she says. "But it can take decades to change attitudes." Fortunately, she has plenty of time to grow into the job.