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 387 rangers and an estimated 4,000 livelihoods across Tanzania. 

The role of rangers:

WWF Tanzania supports the five Wildlife Management Areas that lie within the Selous-Niassa Wildlife Corridor (SNWC) : Mbarang'andu, Chingoli, Kimbanda, Kisungule and Nalika WMAs. The community rangers are critical to ensure wildlife security within the SNWC
carrying-out law enforcement or local by-laws that the local community have developed to sustainably manage their natural resources. Rangers are critical to enforce front-line conservation efforts, including addressing poaching, the removal of snares and illegal hunting and removing livestock being grazed illegally in the community conservation areas. Rangers also work on fire management plans, and mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict with the local community. The rangers patrol across the corridor, through habitats dominated by Miombo woodland, and including grasslands, swamps and riverine forests.

How your donation will help:

The funding would be used for ensuring more patrols and more man-days can be undertaken in the SNWC across all five WMAs. This would result in improved protection of the wildlife and natural resources and increased benefits from the WMA as the community rangers can receive payments for patrol allowances. Equally, with more funds available for the rangers they will be able to mobilize and respond to HWC issues so that the communities suffer less conflict from wildlife and support conservation initiatives. The overall benefit will be improved natural resources, stronger support for conservation and greater chances of attracting investors into the WMAs in order to provide long-term sustainable finance for the WMAs.

Effects of the pandemic:

Local communities surrounding Selous GR and Nyerere NP have established 9 WMAs, including five within the Selous- Niassa Wildlife Corridor. Wildlife-based enterprises, including tourism, trophy-hunting and natural resource management have been developed, and in 2019, four WMAs in the landscape each earn approximately 50,000 USD per year through wildlife-based investments, whilst the remaining 5 WMAs
have no investors and are actively marketing themselves to attract investors. However, even this limited income covered only part of the WMA running costs and associated benefits derived by the community.
Covid-19 has now impacted that income and according to tourism investors, there are 44% direct job losses reported and broadly 50% salary cuts. Tourism numbers have fallen to zero, and forecasts suggest
this situation will continue until December 2020, when some domestic tourism will return, and June 2021 when international tourism will return.  The government-managed Protected Areas are also affected by reduced revenue, and this has affected their ability to carry-out effective management, including mitigation of increasing HWC, which is now a
national priority. The reduced benefits to the communities coupled with the reduced ability for effective management will result in serious negative consequences on natural resources and people.

---------

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.