Six years after these first choices, Eli (a conservation officer with NatureFiji) takes a rare break with one of his wildlife tracker dogs 'Bob' in the wild on the island of Gau..

Eli takes a rare break with one of his wildlife tracker dogs ‘Bob’.

I believe that no one is ever born a leader but one chooses to become a leader in any area of life he decides. Nothing happens without leadership and nothing changes without leadership. My understanding of leadership echoes the statement of a best-selling author, Myles Munroe who said, “Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration, generated by a passion, motivated by a vision birthed from a conviction, produced by a purpose”.

Initially, after high school in the Fiji Islands, I dreamed of becoming a medical doctor as did many of my colleagues at the time. My desire to become one was driven by a personal affinity to help others, aside from the more common and appealing, musings of typical Fiji school kids that becoming a doctor meant wealth. It was not until; I had a conversation on career choices with a brother-in-law of mine, that I began to deeply ponder the importance of the environment for its worth and also the ecological services that it provides to humanity.

He simply asked why I wanted to be a medical doctor? And I said that I had a desire to help people. He then made a statement that revolutionised my view of helping people, which was; “There are other ways to help people that you could consider, medical doctors treat the symptoms of an illness but a conservationist helps to prevent potential illnesses by working to maintain the integrity of the environment that we depend on for health and more. Both are essential careers in the times we live in, but the choice to treat symptoms or prevent the illness is your choice to make.”

It was then, despite the odds being against me because the environmental science course was highly unpopular in 2003 and not many understood it or enrolled into it as compared to more popular commerce courses and the chances of not having a secure economic future was high, that i decided to take up conservation as a career. I had made a decision and I stuck with it.

I could therefore say that, my first experience of becoming a conservation leader was when I made a choice to sign the enrolment form at The University of the South Pacific (USP). I then went on to graduate in 2006 with BSc in Environmental science and have since been involved as a volunteer and as a professional in projects that have the concern of the environment at heart.