Marania Wildlife Guards - Mount Kenya Trust - Wildlife Ranger Challenge 2023
Mount Kenya Trust's Marania Wildlife Guards are taking on the Wildlife Ranger Challenge to raise awareness of the vital role our 44 rangers play in protecting Kenya's Mount Kenya National Park, and supporting an estimated 220 livelihoods.
My story
Rangers are Africa’s unsung heroes. They hold diverse roles as conservationists, teachers, community support workers, leaders and much more.
The Wildlife Ranger Challenge, organised by Tusk, is a celebration of solidarity, connection and camaraderie for the ranger profession. Culminating on 16th September 2023, the campaign raises vital funds for Africa's biodiversity guardians.
The Marania Wildlife Guards (MWG) is one of the Mount Kenya Trust's ranger teams, set up to enhance the capacity of law enforcement personnel to decrease the level of poaching and other illegal activities. The team embark on daily routine patrols of both forest reserve and the national park, curbing illegal activities including hunting, poaching, logging, de-snaring, problem animal control, fighting arson/wildfires, and evicting illegally grazing livestock. The teams operate with both Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kenya Forest Service.
WRC funding has helped to increase MKT’s capacity over COVID-19 and ensured that our teams are kept in the field. With all of the team's funding cut at the start of COVID-19, we were in a very vulnerable position, with a bleak outlook not only for the rangers and their families, but also for the mountain biodiversity as a whole. We saw illegal activities start to skyrocket as the local communities lost jobs and felt the economic hardship that COVID-19 has caused.
Support in 2023 would fund MWG for a full 12 months, ensuring that the highly effective and impactful team is kept in the field and the mountain ecosystem is protected.
Give today and the Scheinberg Relief Fund will match every dollar donated, amplifying your impact. Join us in speaking up #ForWildlifeRangers
Support a unique conservation initiative empowering and uniting wildlife rangers across Africa.
Apr 27, 2023, 4:12:32 PMWildlife rangers operate on the very frontline of conservation across Africa, routinely making personal sacrifices to put their lives on the line to protect the continent’s magnificent wildlife and habitats. Yet they are so much more than just law enforcement officers: rangers are teachers, community support workers, mediators, researchers and so much more. Unfortunately, resources are not keeping pace with the scale of the challenges they are trying to tackle. For the fourth year running, the Wildlife Ranger Challenge sets out to redress this, by raising critical funding to cover operating costs, including salaries and equipment, for over 10,000 rangers. This will help them protect threatened wildlife and some of the continent's most vulnerable areas, while also protecting communities and securing coexistence with wildlife, as well as providing for their own families.
