Run for Rangers – Rangers across Africa unite to protect wildlife from Covid-19 impact

Leruati Morijo, a ranger at a remote outpost on Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, cares for a baby rhino. Credit: Martin Buzora, Wildlife Ranger Challenge

 

 

 

Covid-19 has devastated African wildlife tourism with calamitous impacts on the animals and the people who have dedicated their lives protecting them. In response, rangers across Africa are taking part of a challenge to raise money to bring thousands of their colleagues back to the field. And you can help too.

 

Next week, on 3^rd October, up to 50 ranger teams spanning the African continent will compete in the Wildlife Ranger Challenge, a half marathon race carrying their 25kg backpack containing a typical day’s equipment - along the way, building friendship and raising awareness of the hardship currently faced by those in their profession. 

 

Supporters around the world are encouraged to bolster their efforts and to ‘Run with Rangers’ by taking part in a virtual 5, 10 or 21km run and donating funds or raising sponsorship.

 

Support is coming from the world’s greatest long distance runner, Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya, adventurers and TV personalities Bear Grylls and Levison Wood, as well as the Duke of Cambridge, Tusk’s Patron, along with many other people internationally.

 

In 2018, the global wildlife tourism economy generated over $100bn and provided 9 million jobs, worldwide, but Covid-19 has resulted in an almost complete end to cross-border travel.  The African Union has suggested that the cost of the pandemic on the African travel sector may be $50 billion. 

 

The Game Ranger Association of Africa estimates that there are between 40,000 and 50,000 rangers across the continent and that the vast majority of them have either been furloughed or had their salary reduced by 50% to 80% - leaving families destitute and wildlife vulnerable and unprotected.

 

With remaining rangers stretched to capacity and international and national borders re-opening, it is feared that protected areas across Africa will experience a rapid increase in illegal poaching, as well as a decline in wellbeing and economic security for the communities to whom this wildlife belongs.  This threatens to undo years of rangers’ conservation gains, compromising decades of development and conservation work across Africa.

 

Funds raised through the Wildlife Ranger Challenge will cover salaries for at least 5,000 rangers, enabling them to provide for their families, protect communities and defend endangered wildlife -including elephant, pangolin, rhino and lion - in some of the continent’s most vulnerable areas.

 

“I have spent my entire career working for Malawi’s people and wildlife. I have worked with and alongside wildlife rangers, and even as one myself, and I know they are the lifeblood of the conservation sector in Africa,” says Brighton Kumchedwa, Director, Department of National Parks and Wildlife, Malawi.

 

“I have seen us move from a period of plenty in terms of wildlife to a period of huge losses. We must support rangers to work every day to ensure that our wildlife [is] not lost. The wildlife crisis we are facing is terrifying, but by supporting rangers we are in a position to make a difference, before it is too late. That’s what I remind myself every day.” 

 

 

Rodrigue Katembo - the Congo's park ranger who risks his life to protect wildlife

Rodrigue Katembo/Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize

The best part of my job as a journalist is to spend time with amazing people whom I would never have a chance to meet otherwise.

One of them is Rodrigue Mugaruka Katembo, a former child soldier who has become one of the most passionate defenders of Congo’s natural heritage, first as head ranger at Virunga National Park and now as the director of Upemba National Park, one of Congo’s most spectacular, but also most pillaged, neglected and dangerous parks. 

I’ve met Katembo on one of his rare forays away from Upemba. He spoke in French, in a measured way, sounding more like the civil servant he always wanted to be than the brave ranger who has risked his life many times to protect Congo’s iconic parks. He wants to fight corruption and illegality – a dangerous mission in a country like the Congo.

Katembo was in London last month on his was to San Francisco to receive the 2017 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa (a sort of Nobel for environmental activists), for exposing illegal oil exploration in Virunga - a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to one quarter of the world’s critically endangered mountain gorillas. 

He paid a heavy price: during his investigation, he has been kidnapped, tortured and faced mock executions. You might have seen “Virunga,” the 2014 Netflix documentary which recalls that story. 

A year later, he was transferred to Upemba for his own safety. There he is trying to slowly stabilise wildlife. The elephants, which were emblematic of the park, had been poached on a massive scale by the rangers themselves, the military, the police, the locals and the brutal Mai Mai militia- and those who escaped the slaughter had left the protected area.

He has already reintroduced one population of 68 elephants and another larger one is approaching the park’s borders.  Under his watch, no elephants have been poached in Upemba since 2016.  But it’s no easy job.

Since starting work at Upemba, Katembo has fought off armed militia, faced death threats and refused to accept multiple bribes to gain access to the park for illegal mining. He now lives apart from his wife and children for their safety.

“I am not special, ” Katembo simply said. “Yes, I was imprisoned and tortured, but many guards have died doing their jobs.”   Protecting Congo’s national parks is widely recognized as one of the most dangerous jobs in conservation. Over the past 20 years, more than 160 of Katembo’s park ranger colleagues have been killed - and they still continue to get killed today.

“We need to respect their work. We need to be willing to defend what they have died to protect. By protecting the park, we are protecting unique wildlife, local populations’ livelihood and Congo’s natural heritage – which is also the heritage of the whole world.”

Here is my full story on Katembo for Positive News. There are some great photos too! 

Edward Loure, the Maasai leader who champions indigenous land rights in Tanzania

Edward Loure/courtesy of Goldman Environmental Prize

From the Andes to sub-Saharan Africa, indigenous groups are increasingly fighting for legal ownership of lands their ancestors have occupied for thousands of years – and in the rangelands of Tanzania, one activist believes he’s found a possible solution based on collective ownership.

Edward Loure, a Maasai leader and indigenous land rights activist from northern Tanzania, pioneered an innovative legal mechanism to preserve large expanses of ancestral lands in the Great Rift Valley, protecting both a traditional way of life and wildlife.  It is the first time tribal work has been linked to conservation in Tanzania - creating a model for other indigenous groups elsewhere in Africa and around the world to follow.

Up to two thirds of world's land held by indigenous people are under informal systems not legally recognised by states, according to a recent report by Oxfam International. Communities without formal title to lands where they may have lived for generations can be displaced by large-scale resource extraction projects, sold off to the highest bidder or seized by squatters clearing their land for illegal agriculture, according to the report, backed by 300 organisations worldwide who are pushing to expand land rights.

“Our land means everything to us. If we have no grass pastures, we will not have our cows, and without our cows, we cannot survive,” Loure told me, speaking via Skype from Dar es Salaam.

Loure, who is in his forties, grew up in the Simanjiro plains in the vast northern rangelands of Tanzania. Here communities of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers have lived off the land in harmony with migrating wildlife for centuries.  The savannahs and grasslands of northern Tanzania are home to an abundance of wildlife including gazelles, elephants, wildebeest, zebras, impalas and many other animals that keep the ecosystem in balance. Traditional communities are a vital part of that ecosystem, Loure says. “We depend on our lands and these lands have shaped our cultures and way of life.”

Edward Loure in his community/courtesy of Goldman Environmental Prize

But the pastoralists and hunter-gatherers’ traditional ways of life have been threatened since the 1950s when the Tanzanian government started creating National Parks. These efforts displaced thousands of indigenous people and jeopardized wildlife by destroying migratory corridors. The situation has been exacerbated in recent years by government sell-offs of ancestral lands to hunting and safari companies, and by the encroachment of unauthorised “land grabbers” seeking to use traditional grazing lands for large-scale farming.

Loure’s own community met a similar fate in 1970, when it was forcibly displaced to create the Tarangire National Park. This inspired Loure to join the Ujamaa Community Resource (UCRT), one of the first community-led NGOs in Tanzania, which has championed sustainable development and community land rights for the past 20 years.

Looking for better ways to secure land tenure, Loure saw an opportunity in the strong communal culture among tribes. He worked with UCRT to have a key legal mechanism called Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) – the primary mechanism through which land is protected under the Village Land Act – made available to groups, rather than only to individual land-owners. And that opened the door to a string a land victories. 

Over the years, at least 223,000 acres of Tanzania’s northern rangelands have been safeguarded through CCROs. Once their land rights are legally secured, communities can better access, manage and benefit from their natural resources, Loure says.

These communal land rights concepts, innovated in Tanzania, have the potential to have a global impact, says Matthew Brown, Africa Conservation Director at The Nature Conservancy.  “The notion that we need to secure local people’s collective land rights and have it officially signed off at the national level is replicable and is needed in other countries.”

For his innovative indigenous land rights work, Loure was awarded the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa in April, a sort of Nobel for grassroots environmental activists.
 

You can read more about Loure’s communal land rights scheme and its impact in this story I wrote for Positive News.

Rwanda's Gorilla Guardian

Eugene Rutagarama tracking gorillas early morning to locate them before tourists visit them in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. This is what is done everyday to check on the health of each individual gorilla, but also to ensure that tourists visiting them are able to watch them. Photo: courtesy of Eugene Rutagarama.

Last month, the world remembered the Rwandan genocide. We all marvelled at how the country seemed to have healed and moved on, how the economy was blooming - and we talked about lessons to be learned (in the meantime, there are fears that the conflic in the Central African Republic could lead to another genocide...)

 

The Rwandan genocide was still in full swing this month 20 years ago - in just 100 days, nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. I wanted to speak with a man who worked for peace in a different way: Eugene Rutagarama. He is the man who made sure the genocide didn't include a group of humanity's most endangered relatives – the mountain gorillas.  The gorilla population is now rising and contributing to the nation’s economic growth (an important factor of peace). It is also a rare unifying factor in a region still ravaged by conflicts. Here is my interview with him in The Ecologist.

Rwanda's 'gorilla guardian' - Eugene Rutagarama

Veronique Mistiaen

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda could easily have finished off the mountain gorillas of the Virunga mountains. The fact that they survived is in large part thanks to Eugene Rutagarama. He spoke with Veronique Mistiaen about the primates' future prospects ...

Rwandan biologist Eugene Rutagarama is widely credited for making sure that the victims of the genocide and subsequent wars didn't include the critically endangered mountain gorillas.

The gorillas have and are still contributing to the economic growth of the country - and this in turn is contributing to peace.

Today, nearly half of the world's 800-some remaining mountain gorillas live in the lush tropical forests covering the Virunga Mountains, the chain of volcanoes straddling Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rutagarama's conservation achievements won him the Goldman Environmental Prize - a kind of Nobel Prize for environmental activists - in 2001.

As people all over the world remember Rwanda's 1994 genocide - which was in full swing this month 20 years ago - I wanted to talk to Rutagarama about the remarkable recovery not only of the nation, but of the gorilla population, and his role in it.

The 1994 genocide - today and back then
"April is for me the month when I take time to think of the meaning of the genocide and its implication on the Rwandan society and on me in particular.
"How would I and my relatives be if the genocide didn't occur? What would have been the course of my life? Then I spend time thinking of each of the relatives and friends I lost during the genocide. 

"Almost each Rwandan from all ethnic groups has lost dear relatives and friends or suffered some pain as result of the genocide. The majority of youth is now enjoying the country economic growth and opportunities.
"The coexistence is of course far from being ideal, but tremendous progresses have been made. But the roots of hatred will take long to be completely removed. In this respect, the political leadership matters a lot."

Peaceful giants, and murderous people
Rutagarama is now advisor to the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration - a wildlife conservation cooperation between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

He first looked into the liquid brown eyes of a large silverback during a trip to the Virunga National Park with his brother in 1990. The encounter was so moving and thrilling that he decided to dedicate his life to preserving these peaceful giants.

As he was leaving the park with his brother, another encounter was also going to mark his life. A group of youth blocked their way, sneering: "Have you seen these snakes?" Then they addressed their guide: "Hey guide! Why don't you bash these snakes on the head?"

Four years later, nearly one million "snakes" - or "cockroaches" as the Tutsis were also called - and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutus gone mad. Rutagarama's father, mother and three of his brothers were amongst the victims.

A life's mission: protecting the endangered gorillas
Protecting the gorillas in the aftermath of the genocide became the young biologist's single focus. Above all their habitats were at acute risk as the government tried to resettle more than two million people. And that effort also helped him go beyond hatred and despair.

"After the genocide in 1994, the need for protecting gorillas was urgent. It was for me a priority to make sure that they were protected. I put in my focus and my full soul. There was no more space for anything else."

Gorilla conservation, in fact, played a role in healing not just Rutagarama, but the surviving wildlife staff, many of whose former colleagues had been killed or forced to flee. Indeed the gorillas have helped to bring healing to the whole devastated country.

"After a humanitarian disaster as horrific as the genocide, the common struggle to preserve something of shared value allowed people to transcend the conflict and create links."

Elephants, Rhinos, Lions & Tigers to be extinct within a generation

By the time today’s children are 30, there won't be no more elephants, rhinos, tigers or lions roaming in the wild, warns wildlife and conservation charity, Care for the Wild.  They will all have been hunted down by poachers to fuel illegal ivory trade – a direct result of  growing poverty, ethnic rivalry, terrorism and civil war.

Last year, an estimated 40,000 elephants were killed in Africa while the number of rhinos killed so far this year - around 700 - has already surpassed last year’s total.

Care for the Wild estimates that if poaching continues at its current rate and wildlife’ birth rates remain as predicted, some of the world’s most iconic animals - elephants, rhinos, lions and tigers - will no longer exist in their natural habitat as early as 2035.

“Drawing on our own on-the-ground experience and having studied reports from conservation experts around the world, we’ve concluded that at today’s best estimates, these four children’s picture book favourites  – among many others – will all be extinct in the wild by around 2035. That’s just 22 years. It’s devastating to think that by the time our children are in their thirties, they will have to turn to the television or internet to observe these animals in their natural habitat,” explained Philip Mansbridge, CEO of Care for the Wild.

At a recent illegal wildlife trade event in New York, Foreign Secretary William Hague attributed the problem to terrorism and widespread instability.  Care for the Wild agrees, warning that wildlife poaching in Africa, and in particular the poaching of elephants and rhinos to fuel the illegal ivory trade, is intrinsically linked to growing poverty, ethnic rivalry, terrorism and civil war in affected countries.

It is estimated that Al Shabaab - the group linked to the attack on civilians in Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi - funds 40% of activities through elephant poaching and ivory trade, while recent reports claimed that ‘warlord’ Joseph Kony had ordered the killing of elephants to fund his rebel army, the Lord's Resistance Army.

As the demand for ivory surges in the growing economies of China, Vietnam and across Asia, the prices it commands has reached an all time high. With a 10kg tusk worth almost £10,000, the profitability of such a lucrative trade is attracting some high profile terrorist groups in need of funds.  These groups kill the wild animals using cyanide and military grade weaponry.

Earlier this year, the United Nations recognised wildlife crime as ‘serious transnational organised crime’, in the same bracket as the drugs trade and gun smuggling, while the UNESCO General Secretariat stated: “Given the current rate of poaching, children from West or Central Africa will one day speak of elephants and rhinoceros as we speak of mammoths: as magnificent creatures belonging to the past.”

Care for the Wild has launched its Tooth Fairy campaign to raise awareness and  funds for its anti-poaching work in Africa. The campaign encourages children to become a Tooth Fairy Hero by pledging the money they would have received for wobbly teeth to the charity and learning about the threatened animals.

Iraq’s first national park approved

Here is a piece I wrote for Positive News yesterday on Iraq's Mesopotamian marshes, which became the country's very first national park. I had met Azzam Alwash in London before he was awarded the 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize for his work in restoring the historic wetlands.

Iraq’s first national park approved

Garden of Eden’ returns to life as Mesopotamian marshlands are officially recognised as Iraq’s first national park 

 

Middle East / Environment

02 Aug 2013

Azzam Alwash (right) in the Mesopotamian marshlands     Photo © Goldman Environmental Prize

Despite the ongoing violence and instability in the country, Iraq’s cabinet has managed to approve the creation of the nation’s very first national park.

Approving the project last week, Iraq’s Council of Ministers took a momentous step towards protecting the historic Mesopotamian marshes in the south of the country for future generations.

“With this action, Iraq has acted to preserve the cradle of civilisation,” said Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi engineer and environmentalist, who gave up a comfortable life in California to help restore these unique wetlands and win government protection for them.

“We’ve worked for more than ten years to make this happen – and we still have a lot of work ahead – but we now celebrate an important milestone in the history of Iraq,” he told Positive News.

The Mesopotamian marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, once the third largest wetlands area in the world, are said by Biblical scholars to be the site of the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of civilisation.

It was once a thriving oasis of aquatic life filled with lush reed beds, water buffalo and birds – twice the size of the Florida Everglades and in the middle of a desert. And it was the home of the indigenous Ma’dan Marsh Arabs, direct descendants of the ancient Sumerians.

But in the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein wiped out the ancient marshlands in retaliation against Shia Muslim rebels who had staged an uprising after the first Gulf war and fled there for refuge. He built massive canals that drained all the marshes’ water, then set fire to the reeds and villages, turning the whole area into a vast salt-crusted desert. The United Nations Environment Programme called this action the worst environmental disaster of the last century.

“I expect every self-respecting birder to come to Iraq to complete their life list”

When Saddam’s regime fell, Alwash returned to Iraq and founded the environmental NGO, Nature Iraq, to try to restore the marshes. Over the past decade, he has worked with local people and the government, surveying the region and developing a master plan to resurrect the area.

Now, although greatly changed, the marshes have been re-flooded in many areas and are starting to flourish again. Reed beds, birds, fish, water buffalo and the Ma’dan have returned.

Alwash, who won the 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize for his efforts to restore the wetlands, said he got the idea of turning them into a national park while visiting Yosemite and other national parks in the west of the United States.

“The first task was of course the re-flooding of the marshes and making sure they thrive again, but just as importantly was that the Marsh Arabs wanted to come back, and that, when they came back, they would have a decent way of life.”

Nature Iraq envisions the national park providing both a refuge for Iraq’s marshland biodiversity and a sustainable boost to the local economy through eco-tourism and development projects that bring social benefit.

“As for visitors, the first ones, I am hoping, will be the 20,000 oil field workers in the south of Iraq. Even at $10 per person, that should be a huge boost to the local economy. As stability in Iraq increases and facilities start being built to accommodate visitors, I expect every self-respecting birder to come to Iraq to complete their life list,” said Alwash.

The bigger barrier to successful restoration, however, is the hydro-politics of the region. Syria, Turkey and Iran, Iraq’s upstream neighbours, are increasingly restricting the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates. A chain of 30 dams (most already completed) along the Turkey-Syria border are reducing the flow of water in Iraq and threatening the marshes’ survival.

“By setting the national park, Iraq commits to dedicate a portion of its increasingly limited water resources to keeping the marshes alive and thriving. Furthermore, it is a good argument in negotiations with Turkey to dedicate special spring releases for environmental preservation,” said Alwash.

But ultimately, the marshes can only be protected if there is an international agreement on water-sharing, he added. “The preservation of the marshes is not only Iraq’s duty: it is the world’s duty. This is the cradle of civilisation. This is where agriculture started. This is where writing was invented. This is where Abraham was born.”

More Information:

www.natureiraq.org
www.goldmanprize.org

Category: Environment
Tags: conservation, national park
Location: Middle East
Author: Veronique Mistiaen

"People are being killed for hunting a small impala" – when conservation and human rights clash.

 

                                                  John Antonelli

                                                                                                                               

I’ve always dreamt of seeing lions, elephants and giraffes in their own habitats in the wild. And I thought that wildlife reserves were saving the environment while at the same time injecting money into local communities and providing jobs – they were win-win enterprises.

But I’ve met a woman in London a few months ago who told me it is not always the case and often the survival of endangered species is pitted against the rights of some of the world’s poorest people.  Since more and more people visit wildlife parks, I thought I’d share here some of her concerns about the situation in her own country, Swaziland.

                                                             John Antonelli

The woman, Thuli Brilliance Makama, is Swaziland's only public interest environmental lawyer. She won the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize in April for defending the rights of local communities and trying to give them a stake in protecting the environment. The $900,000 award, the world's largest prize for environmental activism, is shared between winners from six continental regions of the world.   Thuli was in London briefly, on her way to collect her award in San Francisco.

Here is what is happening in Swaziland:

Swaziland is a small landlocked country in the middle of South Africa and Mozambique, plagued by food and water shortages, overwhelming health problems and acute poverty. Yet white rhinos, elephants, lions, zebras, hippos and mamba snakes all thrive in its diverse ecosystems, and the kingdom has become a popular international destination for big game hunters and wildlife tourists.

But, in the name of conservation, local people have increasingly been forced off of their traditional lands and persecuted for continuing the hunting and gathering practices necessary for their survival. “It is near the edges of protected areas that you find the poorest of the poor. There is so much animal life there, but so little for the people,” Thuli said. Near the lush parks, local populations eke out a meagre existence through a combination of foraging and food aid (more than 600,000 of the country's one million people depend of food aid).

 With her local NGO, Yonge Nawe, she has documented the forced evictions, violence and killings of locals living in areas around conservation parks. She is calling on the Swazi government to bring the perpetrators to trial and offer compensation to local communities for lost land.

Villagers next to a big game park.                        Hosea Jemba

In Swaziland, important game protection laws are controlled by the monarch - not the government - and the king has given the administration of these laws to a private company, Big Game Parks, which operates three parks in the country and is owned by the Reilly family. In 1997, an amendment to the Game Act (not debated in Parliament) gave BGP rangers immunity from prosecution as long as they acted while "protecting game".  Yonge Nawe claims that as many as 50 local people have been killed since then.

Ted Reilly, who turned his farm into the country's first wildlife sanctuary in the 1960s and whose conservation efforts are recognized internationally, insists that without his company, Swaziland's parks would not exist and says his rangers act within the law.  In the early 1990s, there were barely any rhinos left.  It's only because he fought back and became tough with poachers that wildlife flourished back, he told Associated Press.

But Thuli maintains that many of BGP rangers' targets are just ordinary people, struggling to survive on the fringes of the parks. "These are just hunters and gatherers who need this to survive. People are being killed for hunting a small impala.”   She says she is not condoning poaching, but wants to see the poachers prosecuted instead.

 She believes that Swazi's remaining wildlife will not survive unless local people are given a stake in preserving it and can share some of its benefits.  “It can been done. Look at Kenya and Zimbabwe.”

She has recently won a landmark case to include environmental NGO representation in conservation decisions, and is now able to call on the Swazi government to repeal Section 23 of the Game Act, which gives free reins to park rangers.

I am hoping to go to Swaziland and look at the conservation vs. human rights issue from both sides.