About the Wildlife Ranger Challenge: 

COVID-19 has brought tourism revenue to a halt across Africa, threatening the important work and livelihoods of the rangers who protect iconic African wildlife such as elephants, pangolins, rhinos, lions, and more. Ranger teams are now uniting around the Wildlife Ranger Challenge, a running race with one goal: to raise money to support thousands of their fellow rangers. Now is the time to go the extra mile—it’s time to race to support our rangers. Every dollar donated will be matched by the Scheinberg Relief Fund, doubling your generous contribution.

Your contribution will help support 58 rangers and an estimated 500 livelihoods in and around South Luangwa National Park.

The role of rangers:

Rangers work tirelessly on a daily basis conducting anti-poaching patrols inside and outside the national park. Well-trained rangers are deployed on patrol from headquarters or are based at remote anti-poaching camps. Rangers help mitigating human wildlife conflict, an increasing problem in South Luangwa, and at the moment are deployed to help use Conservation South Luangwa's "chilli blasters" in deterring crop and property damaging elephants.  Rangers are also on call for anti-poaching aerial surveillance five days a week and assist in de-snaring and wildlife rescue activities with our wildlife rescue unit. 

How your donation will help:

The Ranger Fund would ensure all our rangers are kept in full employment and able to continue conducting their critical anti-poaching work.

Effects of the pandemic:

The South Luangwa Valley is Zambia’s premiere safari tourism destination and in an average year 25,000-30,000 visitors flock here. With over a dozen established lodges and 20+ bush camps, businesses are normally thriving at this time of year, and a very large local service sector is key to this lucrative and growing wildlife-based economy. 

The COVID-19 crisis has suddenly thrown this economy, ecosystem, and its dependent communities into an unprecedented emergency. With the global collapse of tourism and air-travel, virtually all flights to Zambia have been temporarily stopped, no tourist visas are currently being issued, and most safari companies have shut down for the foreseeable future. It is projected that all conservation-related tourism funding streams for 2020 will be lost.
 
Furthermore, an estimated 1,000 safari employees are currently not working or are at home on reduced wages, with large numbers of dependent family members. A spike in snaring and conflict is expected as communities unsurprisingly turn to natural resources to survive.
 In order to address this, rangers are now conducting patrols with smaller teams to cover a greater area for a longer period of time.

This is a critical time and we need to maintain protection of the area.

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Tusk is registered with JustGiving in the UK (or GoFundMe.com in the USA). Our online fundraising sites allow you to create a sponsorship form with easy access for your supporters, knowing their money is going directly to Tusk. UK tax-paying donors can enhance their contribution by agreeing to Gift Aid their sponsorship (for every £10 you raise, Tusk will receive another £2.50 from the Government provided you are a UK taxpayer). US supporters wishing to make a tax deductible donation can do so via GoFundMe.com.