On 11 February 2023, Eleanor Jane Sterling passed away peacefully in her sleep in Windward Oʻahu with her husband Kevin Frey at her side after fighting an aggressive case of pancreatic cancer. Her untimely passing at the height of her transformative career leaves family, friends and colleagues the world over to reflect on her profound legacy.

Credit: D. Finnin/©AMNH

Eleanor’s versatility and accomplishments across disciplines were recognized by the Society for Conservation Biology Distinguished Service Award and the IUCN Fred M. Packard International Parks Merit Award, among others. A few examples from her work illustrate this versatility: through her dissertation she became a world authority on the aye-aye (a long-fingered nocturnal lemur), and also established herself as a renowned sea turtle biologist mid-career. She could pivot from scuba-diving in the remote Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in pursuit of acoustic receivers to exploring innovative methods to assess the connections between people and place, in work that spanned from New York City to Solomon Islands, France and Russia. She threw herself into all aspects of research projects from team leadership to data entry, georeferencing and morphometrics. She collaboratively designed thought-provoking museum exhibitions on water, food, and the biodiversity and culture of Vietnam, and developed and taught innovative curricula at seven colleges and universities.

As an undergraduate at Yale with an interest in linguistics, Eleanor’s curiosity was kindled and her academic trajectory was changed by the novel pedagogy of biological anthropologist Alison Richard, who, she said, literally “leaped around the lecture hall” in imitation of the lemurs she was describing. This spark of creativity inspired Eleanor to deepen her interest and connect it with the origins of human language, anthropology and psychology, and, later, to the intersection of cultural and biological diversity. Throughout her career, Eleanor followed this model and looked for novel approaches to inspire others to challenge their thinking. She applied this creative lens through decades of work that spanned local to global scales, from the US Peace Corps to the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation and the University of Hawaiʻi, and then translated it into a wide-ranging action-research programme that explored biocultural approaches to conservation. In a perspective in Nature Ecology & Evolution, she described biocultural conservation as beginning with place-based values and centred Indigenous people and local communities (E. Sterling et al. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 1, 1798–1806; 2017). In this sense, she was decades ahead of many colleagues in the global conservation community in her openness to different ways of knowing about the world, especially Indigenous epistemologies. This openness enabled her to tackle the difficult task of bridging different ways of knowing to measure and assess intangibles, such as how learning happens and what it means to live a good life. She approached every challenge as an opportunity to learn and grow, and to bring others along with her on the journey.

Eleanor delighted in supporting the growth and development of her students and mentees, including over 80 graduate students and countless early-career professionals. Her commitment to excellence and high standards brought out the best in her colleagues and students. Students would line up outside her office, seek her out at conferences or join her in fieldwork all over the world. Throughout her distinguished career and despite an indefatigable travel schedule, she remained humble and approachable, listening carefully to students’ stories and needs, sharing her wisdom and wonderful sense of humour and, along the way, changing their lives.

Eleanor understood that the key to everything is relationships and connection — with and between people and the natural world. She spearheaded innovative programmes that continue to advance numerous fields and encourage collective learning while also weaving networks of people that transform scholarship and practice, such as the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners and the Student Conference on Conservation Science. During the past year in her role as director of the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, her work continued to embody the spirit of laulima, a Hawaiian word that literally means ‘many hands’ or working together for the good of the community. Eleanor’s facility with nine languages infused her approach to research and practice, and she often spoke about how the power of words lies in their ability to convey deep meaning and knowledge, and to create connection to the past, present and future. Her career illustrates how laulima is a key component of human well-being.

Eleanor always knew that conservation of biodiversity, at its core, is about connecting with people and confronting disparities of every kind. She was an early champion of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, and she infused these essential values into every aspect of her work, from educating generations of students to meeting with global leaders. Eleanor was committed to redressing the ways in which conservation has marginalized people by recruiting new and diverse voices, challenging long-held norms and showing through her research and practice how conservation can and should evolve into a field that can meet this critical moment for humanity.

As the global community grapples with the enormity of a climate-changed future, the themes of transdisciplinarity and systems thinking within the groundwork she laid decades ago are emerging in highly impactful ways: for example, in the innovative emphasis on values and transformative change of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the vision for a resilient and equitable world in USAID’s Climate Strategy.

Throughout her remarkable and inspiring life, Eleanor embraced reciprocity. The tremendous outpouring of support for her as she courageously faced her illness and after her passing is an indication of the extent of her legacy, embodied in the lives of those she touched throughout a career of tireless commitment to meaningful conservation action.