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 76  rangers and an estimated 300 livelihoods in and around the Luwire Conservancy in Mozambique.

The role of rangers:

Rangers working at Luwire, a conservancy within the Niassa Special Reserve, play a major role in reserve-wide security. They are part of a vigilance network that provided more than 80% of the leads related to elephant poaching in the region, a critical element of an effort that led to the recent collapse of ivory poaching across northern Mozambique. 

Rangers also make the majority of armed poacher arrests and illegal firearms seizures in the area. This ongoing effort, with supporting aerial surveillance, remains essential to preventing a resurgence of environmental crime like ivory poaching.

How your donation will help:

Any additional funding would help close the gap in our budget until tourism returns — likely not until May or June of 2021. Retrenchments would leave no rangers to maintain the gains of 20 years of dedicated conservation within the area. Furthermore it would avoid the costly process of re-building our team once conditions normalize.

Effects of the pandemic:

Though our operating budget was cut by 60%, the 2020 contingency plan focuses on surviving the current crisis and keeping all local staff employed. There is no alternative employment in the area. Without jobs, people are more likely to turn to environmental crime to survive. 

-----------------

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

.