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 9 rangers and an estimated 70 livelihoods in and around Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.

Role of Rangers:

Conservation and Wildlife Fund rangers work in Hwange National Park as well as the forestry areas on its periphery. Rangers are highly trained in anti-poaching work: snare detection, poacher apprehension, tracking and anti-tracking, use of GPS and radio, recognising signs of poachers, map reading, spoor and wildlife identification, patrol methods, non-verbal communications and the use of Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), a digital data logging system.

The rangers spend most of their time on anti-poaching patrols—in 2019 the foot patrols covered a total of 6,785 km. They record age and gender data of specific species that they encounter, including vultures. If they come across a carcass they inform their manager, who will perform a postmortem if possible. The rangers are called on to attend court as credible witnesses when poachers they arrested appear in court.

How a donation will help:

Our intention has always been to increase the number of rangers working in and around Hwange National Park,  and now, with the COVID-related increase in poaching and considering the huge expanse of land that the project covers, this should be done as soon as possible.

Increasing the size of the team involves monthly wages and rations, as well as the initial expenses of patrol equipment and uniforms for the new rangers - this is what we would like money raised in the Wildlife Ranger Challenge to go towards. However, if we are unable to source funding to keep our existing rangers employed, money from the challenge would be used to keep our current team going first.

Effects of the pandemic:

The CWF model relies heavily on income from tourism, and with no guests arriving since April this year due to COVID-19, this source of income has been unceremoniously cut off. Just when we need to be expanding our operations, we have to stick to a very tight budget to keep going.

When lockdown was initially declared, the rangers who were in camp had to stay at work for two months, and those out on days off had to stay out. This obviously threatened to compromise our work, but the rangers in camp rose to the challenge and not a day's patrolling was lost. Fortunately, they are allowed to move more freely now.

Besides the rangers, communities and many other individuals in the Hwange area are very dependent on tourism – for employment, income from curio sales, etc., and for support from the tourist lodges (such as donations to schools and local clinics, both financially and in kind). Many people, now out of jobs and with no other source of income, are turning to poaching for subsistence and commercial gain, which has increased the work for our rangers.

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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.