What if you have an important mission to accomplish but you find yourself almost an outcast? Pioneer non-profit organizations usually have to struggle with several adverse factors until they finally achieve their first outcomes. This task can get even harder when such organizations are the only ones fighting for something which is unknown to their own society.

Kanako Ake is a Ph.D. student from the Department of Nature Conservation at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and her study subject is the African painted dog (Lycaon pictus). She also currently works for the Japan Wildlife Conservation Society (JWCS), tackling some of the main challenges for wildlife conservation in Japan, such as the ivory trade, the use of endangered species in traditional medicine, monitoring of fishery activities, and the pet trade of endangered species. The JWCS is the only non-profit organization in Japan concerned with biodiversity conservation and raising public awareness of its losses.

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Website: https://www.jwcs.org/en/about/