In the Bangwelu Wetlands of Zambia in southern Africa, a Hoosier is making her mark trying to save a vulnerable species of bird.
Shoebills are large, prehistoric-looking birds with prominent hooked beaks. They are about 5 feet tall, have an 8-foot wingspan and eat fish. But, according to zoologist Maggie Hirschauer, besides some basics, scientists don’t know much about them.
“If you look in the literature, there’s a few papers, but we don’t know how long they live in the wild,” Hirschauer told Mirror Indy. “We don’t know how to yet quantify their habitat. Why are they choosing that area? What makes it a shoebill habitat? We don’t know.”
Hirschauer is working to change that. She leads a team of conservationists with the international nonprofit conservation organization African Parks that studies the birds and looks for ways to ensure that shoebills are around for future generations to see.
Her work has put her in the running for the 2027 Indianapolis Zoo’s Emerging Conservationist Award. Hirschauer is among 19 international finalists, including three fellow Americans.
The award recognizes conservationists under 40 and, besides prestige, it also comes with a $50,000 prize. The biennial award has only been given twice before.
“The recognition is great, but it means that there’s more support to get the work funded and to get the work done, so it’s really exciting,” Hirschauer said.
Growing up in the Indianapolis area
Hirschauer grew up in Carmel, but went to school in Indianapolis. She went to St. Luke Catholic School in Washington Township and graduated from Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Pike Township.
She developed a love for animals despite an allergy to dogs and cats.
“My family always jokes that I’m the black sheep, because we never had dogs and they don’t like animals,” she said. “They don’t understand where it comes from, and I can’t even really explain where it comes from either.”
Later, Hirschauer became interested in exotic animals.
“I’ve always been driven towards African ecosystems, and I can’t even tell you why,” Hirschauer said. “I have been obsessed with giraffes since I was 12, and that was the entry.”
Her family wanted to nurture her passion for animals, but, with no giraffes available, her father’s friend helped her find the next long-necked mammal down the line — a llama.
“There’s a llama farm in Zionsville that I used to work at. I would just brush the llamas and feed them, and just do whatever a high school kid can do just to see if I would like working with animals. I loved it,” Hirschauer said.
Getting animal skills at IU
Working with animals helped her decide that’s what she wanted to do with her life. She enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington.
“I wanted to do something in the sciences, but they didn’t have an animal-specific program. They had an individualized major program where you can craft your own major, so I made an animal behavior degree so I could just focus on the stuff that really interested me the most,” she said.
There, she met Professor Kevin Hunt, an anthropologist who would help her achieve her dream of studying African animals.
For 30 years, Hunt has led the Semliki Chimpanzee Project, which studies wild chimpanzees in Semliki National Park in western Uganda in order to learn more about humans’ earliest ancestors, the australopithecines.
The work is difficult, as it requires researchers to spend about 13 hours a day for a year observing the apes and noting their behavior every two minutes.
“After you’ve been doing it a few months, a lot of the newness of it and the fascination with the animals begins to wear off, and it begins to be a hard job, like working in a factory, where you’ve got to keep grinding away,” he said.
Hunt, who has worked with legendary primatologist Jane Goodall, says Hirschauer quickly took to work in the field.
“When it came to getting into the forest and doing the work and staying in there, she was the best,” Hunt said. “I sort of turned her loose there to learn on her own the things you can learn when you’re in the forest with wild animals. Some people don’t do it. She took advantage of the opportunity she had and made that experience one that was important to her.”
Hirschauer said the experience was difficult but exciting.
“So, I am a 19-year-old young woman going off into the middle of nowhere to manage a camp on the border of the (Democratic Republic of the) Congo, and I have to manage three or four of his staff, all Ugandan men, out in the middle of the bush following chimpanzees for six months,” Hirschauer said. “It was amazing, and the fact that he gave me that opportunity changed my life.”
Hirschauer said Hunt’s mentorship helped her gain the confidence she needed to pursue a career researching animals wherever they may be.
After studying chimpanzees, Hirschauer studied blue monkeys in Kenya, vultures in South Africa and mountain lions and butterflies in Montana. Her work with butterflies was the subject of a short film.
In 2022, Hirschauer was recruited to her current position at African Parks, shoebill program manager.
“It was an opportunity to start something and potentially make a really big impact for a species, because what we’re doing here has never been done before,” she said. “I was ready for the challenge, is what it really came down to.”
Using puppets to raise shoebills
Hirschauer’s work with shoebills in Zambia involves studying them in their natural environment and helping them increase their numbers. Right now, only about 8,000 shoebills exist in the world.
“They’re really incredible birds,” she said. “They’re predators. Their eyes are so piercing. They’re very intense birds.”
The birds are usually very still unless they are hunting. They mainly eat large fish, but also hunt frogs, lizards and even baby crocodiles.
A large part of what Hirschauer does is protecting the area where shoebills live.
The Bangwelu Wetlands of Zambia are at the southernmost portion of their habitat and are considered a game management area. That means people are still allowed to live within the protected area, and about 60,000 people do.
Hirschauer and African Parks have attempted to get people living in the area involved in protecting the animals by giving them a financial incentive — $120 a month to protect and report on individual nests and a $250 bonus when shoebill chicks become independent.
The conservationists verify there’s a shoebill nest, give them a uniform and a phone and check in with them weekly. They also reach out to local leadership and schools to get more people involved in wildlife protection.
“(Fishermen) know shoebill behavior better than anybody, because they live with them and fish with them,” Hirschauer said. “What we are trying to do is build a community that recognizes the shoebill as a flagship for broader wetland protection.”
The nest protection program also helps Hirschauer save shoebill chicks. The bird usually lays one or two eggs. If there are two, one chick usually hatches before the other and either kills its sibling outright or outcompetes it for food.
Hirschauer’s team raises the younger birds at its facilities, taking care to ensure they don’t get used to humans.
She interacts with them while wearing a shoebill puppet designed by Jim Henson Co. muppeteer Bill Diamond.
The puppet has the appearance of an adult shoebill, with a long beak, yellow eyes and a felt-like skin that mimics the bird’s feathers.
“Any time that we interact with the birds, we do it in full dress. We even cover our hands with socks so that they can’t see fingers,” she said. “We don’t want them to know people, so we’re constantly whispering or are totally quiet.”
The shoebill chicks are kept for a minimum of nine months and then released back into their habitats.
More steps ahead for award
Hirschauer is proud of her work and happy for the recognition, but she says the best part of potentially winning the Emerging Conservationist Award would be the support her work would get.
“It’s really exciting. It’s kind of added a little extra energy for me just to have the potential to win,” she said.
Selecting the award winner will be a two-stage process. First a review committee will narrow the pool to 10 finalists, then a selection committee will cut that down to three.
The winner will be announced at the Indianapolis Prize Gala in downtown Indianapolis Sept. 25, 2027.
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Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on Bluesky at @enriquesaenz.bsky.social.
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