Mount Kenya Trust - Wildlife Ranger Challenge 2022

Rangers are Africa’s unsung heroes. They don’t just fight poaching - they are conservationists, teachers, community support workers, leaders and much more.

The Wildlife Ranger Challenge, organized by Tusk and culminating on 17th September, celebrates their many roles and is raising much-needed funds to support their work.

Mount Kenya Trust has four patrol teams, distributed in sectors within Mount Kenya. The Horse Patrol Team (HPT) is one of the few mounted community ranger teams in Kenya. HPT was set up to enhance the capacity of law enforcement personnel to decrease the level of poaching and other illegal activities. The team takes daily patrols of both forest reserve and the national park, identifying illegal activities including hunting, poaching, logging, de-snaring, problem animal control, fighting arson/wildfires, and removing 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 could be kept in the field. With all of the team's funding cut at the start of 2020, we were in a very vulnerable position, with a bleak outlook not only for the rangers but also for the mountain biodiversity as a whole, as 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 2022 would fund the HPT for a full 12 months, ensuring that the highly effective and impactful team is kept in the field and the mountain protected.

Give today, and the Scheinberg Relief Fund will match every dollar donated, amplifying your impact. Follow campaign updates on social media with #ForWildlifeRangers