Biography

FIONA MACLEOD is a seasoned investigative environmental journalist who is pioneering the use of new media tools to expose eco-offences in Southern Africa, and to track offenders around the world.

As editor of Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism, she heads up journalistic collaborations that have changed lives, policies and laws. Several of the unit's benchmark projects have been replicated in other parts of the world, and have received global recognition.

Macleod won the prestigious SAB EnviroMedia Written Media Award in 2018 for collaborative multimedia journalism projects showing how local neighbourhoods are surviving disruption by global climate change, and a year-long investigation into the anti-poaching buffer zone along Mozambique and Kruger National Park in South Africa.

She also won the SAB EnviroMedia Print and Online Award in October 2014 for the Oxpeckers Fellowship project – just one year after Oxpeckers was launched.

Under her leadership, Oxpeckers was named 2017 SAB Environmental Journalist of the Year for its data-driven series on financial provisions for mine closures and rehabilitation. Oxpeckers transnational investigations into rhino poaching won the CNN Multichoice African Environment Journalist of the Year Award in 2016, as well as the 2016 Journalist of the Year Award at the China Environmental Press Awards.

Prior to founding Oxpeckers, Macleod worked as an award-winning journalist and editor at a range of the region's top media. She served as environment editor at the Mail & Guardian newspaper for 10 years, and was awarded the coveted Nick Steele Award recognising her contributions to environmental conservation through her pioneering reportage. At M&G she founded the Greening the Future and the Investing in the Future CSI/R awards programmes.

She has served terms on the judging panels of the eta energy efficiency Awards, the SANParks Kudu Awards and The Green Trust awards, and has edited several books.