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 donation will help 50 rangers and an estimated 500 livelihoods in and around Kenya's South Rift.

Role of rangers:

SORALO rangers help protect an area of 15,000 square kilometres. This is an area half the size of Belgium to put it into perpective. This landscape is home to the Maasai people (our rangers are all local Maasai) and their livestock, who live alongside large numbers of wildlife. Thanks to the local Maasai, wildlife are still able to move freely across the landscape and by doing so enhance the connectivity between the world famous Mara-Serengeti and Amboseli-Tsavo wildlife ecosystems. The key role of SORALO’s community rangers is conserving this coexistence and keeping this landscape connected. Doing so is no easy feat and requires our community rangers to keep wildlife safe from people and communities safe from wildlife. On a daily basis they might conduct anti-poaching patrols, rescue lost livestock and children, protect farms from crop-raiding elephants, or just be a friend-in-need to a neighbour who has lost a cow to a lion. 

How a donation would help:

Support provided to SORALO will help ensure community efforts to conserve wildlife continue to grow rather than falter during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond by (i) ensuring community rangers have the resources they need to operate effectively, (ii) completing the training, hiring and deployment of 15 partially trained community rangers (iii) improving SORALO’s ability to use technology to remotely manage teams, (iv) developing and training rangers on new methods of community engagement which can be conducted in the absence of meetings.

Effects of the pandemic:

High densities of wildlife exist in the South Rift despite a lack of government protected areas. SORALO, local communities, and the Kenya Wildlife Service work collaboratively to protect wildlife and ensure wildlife and people can coexist. Unfortunately, the lack of conservation infrastructure and investment in the region limits the ability for SORALO and the Kenya Wildlife Service to ensure wildlife across the region is protected. With only 20 KWS rangers and 50 community rangers operating out of 5 permanent bases, and with one dedicated KWS vehicle covering the area of 15,000 square kilometres, wildlife protection teams are overstretched (1 ranger per 250km2) and underequipped.

Despite heavy conservation investment in the adjacent Amboseli Ecosystem and Mara Ecosystems little focus has been given to conservation efforts in the South Rift region. This situation has been exacerbated by the recent COVID pandemic which has, among other things, forced several key donors to cut or suspend their support resulting in the loss of more than US $ 150,000 in funding (25% of SORALO's annual operating budget).

This retraction of funds has been particularly damaging for a team of 15 newly recruited community rangers who were undergoing training at the Kenya Wildlife Service Enforcement Academy. As a result of the pandemic their training has been suspended indefinitely as has the grant to support their deployment and salaries. Additionally, SORALO’s running costs have increased considerably as result of social distancing guidelines that prompted us to divide our ranger teams into more smaller teams, increasing our need for more equipment and planning. 

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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.