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 252 rangers and an estimated 3,000 livelihoods in and around Kuku Group Ranch in Kenya.

The role of rangers:

The rangers from the local Maasai community of Kuku Group Ranch operate under a formalized partnership with Kenya Wildlife Service. The community rangers have received formal training at KWS law enforcement training school in Manyani. The main duty of the rangers is to protect the natural resources of the Maasai community, conserving the wildlife and habitat of their land. 

Ranger Teams keep poaching within Kuku Group Ranch at a low level and have supported KWS inarrests of poachers in neighbouring areas. In addition to poachers, rangers stop people using land illegally (i.e. illegal fires, illegal river diversion, illegal timber harvesting), with special attention to high-value conservancy land, which has the strictest management requirements. They patrol more than 12,000 acres of restricted-use conservancy zones.

Additionally, rangers work together with verification officers as part of the Wildlife Pays program, which encourages responsible husbandry practices and compensates livestock herders for losses to wildlife predations. The rangers play a critical role in mitigating any human-wildlife conflicts by acting as the bridge between the organisation and the local community.

Effects of the pandemic:

The outbreak of Covid19 has proved to be a challenge in implementing most of the project activities, especially those that involve gatherings or meetings within the team and with community members. Due to the stringent measures issued by the Kenyan Government pertaining to social distancing, many of our rangers have been asked to go home, ultimately limiting the amount of persons in the field thus affecting the efficacy of their daily patrols. The smaller teams of rangers who were asked to stay at their stations also found themselves working for longer periods of time without scheduled offs, which resulted in mental and psychological demoralisation and low team spirit.

Due to the halt in tourism within Kenya, this funding stream has stopped thus forcing our organisation to issue salary cuts spread throughout all staff and programs. We have observed an overall delay in arrest follow throughs at a governmental level, which affects the efficacy of civil arrests made by the rangers, resulting in an overall demoralisation of the team. This has caused fewer arrests as a result.

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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.