Annette Arjoon-Martins

RAISED BY HER INDIGENOUS GRANDMOTHER IN GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA, ANNETTE BUILT A FEMALE DRONE UNIT TO MONITOR MANGROVES

- JO DAVEY

Groundbreaking conservationist, pilot and airline executive Annette Arjoon-Martins has spent much of her career pushing doors open in traditionally male-dominated fields. Through her conservation work at the Imbotero Research Center in Guyana’s remote North West District, she aims to improve the lives of women in the Indigenous Warau community. Tourism to Annette’s wild region — which incudes the Barima-Mora Passage, Guyana’s largest remaining mangrove forest — is in its infancy, but her centre’s introduction of community homestays and environmental protection is helping to raise visitor numbers.

Where does your love of nature come from?

My mum had me very young, at 16, and left me with my grandmother, an Indigenous Arawak Black woman living in the Pomeroon riverine community [in northern Guyana]. Growing up there, everything was connected to the environment. I spent my formative years in the hinterlands — that’s what gave me my love for all things environmental at a really young age. It was a very natural progression when choosing my career.