On 27 September 2026 I'm running the Loch Ness Marathon as part of the Wildlife Ranger Challenge 2026, raising funds for the rangers and game scouts of Zimbabwe's Mid-Zambezi Region and the work of The Tashinga Initiative with their partner HowManyElephants.

Years ago, as an engineering student, I spent time volunteering in Chewore South - a remote corner of the Zambesi Valley, and about as far from a Scottish loch as its possible to get. I went to gain experience but what I got instead was an admiration for a set of people I've never quite been able to leave behind. Once home, I started sending a donation every month, and I've never stopped.

The Wildlife Ranger Challenge is run each year by ranger teams across Africa, in uniform and on the ground they protect, culminating in a 21km half marathon with every ranger carrying a 22kg pack. My 26.2 miles will be around a loch, on a road, in September drizzle, with a bag drop at the end. Theirs is the harder morning.

Ranging is a harder job than it has ever been. Rangers face poaching in many forms, long patrols, and too few people to cover the ground. Now there is shrinking international aid and tight conservation budgets on top. Each team running this year represents rangers right across the continent - people who spend their working lives defending wildlife, holding the integrity of habitat together, and standing on the front line.

The Tashinga Initiative continues to support these Rangers, and I've seen it first hand. It provides Rangers and game scouts and the families behind them: solar panels, water pumps, vegetable gardens, RangerProtect insurance, boots that survive a patrol season, and the kind of support that lets people take pride in the job. None of it is glamorous. All of it matters.

Please give whatever you can - it buys real things for real people doing one of the hardest jobs in conservation, and I'll be thinking of them somewhere around mile 20.

All funds raised on this page are matched by Tusk Trust raising an extra 25% - possibly more whilst the matched funds last. Thankyou.