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 30 rangers and an estimated 150 livelihoods in and around Mt Kenya National Park and Reserve in Kenya.

The role of rangers:

Rangers are involved in the prevention and protection of the park and Forest Reserve by direct threats such as illegal logging, poaching, water extraction, fires and over grazing. Mt Kenya Trust deploys four community ranger teams to work closely with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the government’s wildlife agency, to reduce poaching and forest destruction on Mt. Kenya. They face harsh terrain, high altitudes and challenging weather conditions on a daily basis to protect Mt Kenya’s ecosystem. They man their bases year-round and carry out long patrols to support KWS in combating illegal extraction of wildlife, timber and charcoal from the forest and moorland.

The ranger teams remove traps and snares set for poaching and bushmeat, making arrests and apprehending those illegally in the forest logging hardwood or clear-cutting to grow marijuana. They are regularly involved in firefighting with the KWS, Kenya Forest Service, and local communities – fires that can wipe out vast tracts of forest if not controlled.

How your donation will help:

Joint patrols, alongside KWS and Kenya Forest Service, are carried out from the team bases along with extended camping patrols around the whole perimeter of the forest. Funding for all of our teams has been reduced or are simply no longer available. At the end of last year we took on the costs of a small two-man team in the Ragati Area to assist some partners not knowing what lay ahead of us. We need to be part of job security and job creation more than ever now, especially as there is increasing pressure on our resources, forests, and wildlife in this difficult time.  

There is evidence that illegal activities are on the rise and concentrated in the areas the rangers patrol. A recent study of elephant populations on the mountain found illegal threats have increased by 51% since 2016. Illegal logging increased 3.5 fold and livestock numbers increased by 75%. Meat poaching was found to be more spread and in the same areas where logging increased. Failure to fund this team would leave the mountain at risk for these harmful activities to spread further.

Effects of the pandemic:

The pandemic has affected the organisation with shifts to our operating dynamics and project future potentials. The largest impact, apart from the restrictions in the field, has been reductions in funding from partners and supporters who depend on events or tourism for their sources of income. Although we don't directly depend on tourism as an organisation, many of our supporters do.

Early on in the pandemic, we made the commitment to keep our staff safe and employed and decided to cut back on any additional projects that were not critical to our staff. This was for several reasons but keeping our staff with a regular income is so important when such a large percentage of the Kenyan community is suffering economic setbacks due to COVID-19 restrictions. This, however, has come at a cost to community projects or those that were not seen as core to Mt Kenya Trust, which reduces our impact and protection of the mountain as a whole.

We quickly realised that projects had to go ahead in many aspects. For example, reducing camping patrols was not an option due to a large and widespread increase in illegal activities as described above. This includes an increase in snaring, and in particular as mentioned below, large mammal snaring. Because of this trend, our teams are doubling efforts to deter and arrest individuals found in the forest and deactivate and remove as many snares as possible.

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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.