This Watch Wednesday, we celebrate our female rangers 22 June 2022

The Female Rangers of Great Plains

I have never responded well to someone saying, ‘No, you can’t do that!’ We can all dream.

We must all dream. If we agreed each time we heard the above, we would have achieved nothing at all. We would not be moving the 3,000 animals in Project Rewild Zambezi we spoke of last week.

‘Impossible’ is not a word in our Great Plains vocabulary. Nor should it be for anyone, particularly women, who want to get into active duty on the front lines of conservation.

This week, I want to talk about one of our most important programs, the Female Rangers of Great Plains initiative, celebrating the inaugural World Female Ranger Week. This is a tribute to and recognition of those women in conservation worldwide.

Late last year, we put out a call for applications for female ranger jobs. We had a budget for 12, maybe 24 at a squeeze. Within 24 hours, we received 200 job applications in Botswana and Zimbabwe! These are monitoring roles, bush patrols, and early detection of poaching activities that get handed on to armed government teams.

We have started recruiting and training the first intake of female rangers, and they have added some insights in the video below.

Not all of the intake will make it through to the next training round. Many may find that it is not for them. But they do not take no for an answer. They did dream and they acted on it. And that is what is important.

As more and more animals arrive in our private Sapi Reserve around Tembo Plains, we will need more and more rangers to look after them. There is no limit to the opportunities for anyone at Great Plains, female or male.

We celebrate the female rangers who have leaned forward to nurture Nature and protect it, everywhere.

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