Heart of the Wild: Africa’s Wildlife Rangers | Full Documentary

Even if today I'm not in Savo, wherever I'll be, I'll always be protecting the wildlife. Africa, the cradle of life itself, a cosmos of infinite possibility, and the open window to our world. Stretching over 30 million square kilometers, the continent is home to 1.3 billion people and an estimated 1 million species of animals. This includes both the heaviest and tallest land animals on earth, among many, many others. With such an abundance of irreplaceable wildlife, rich heritages and cultures, and essential habitats and fragile ecosystems, the question remains, what can we as people do to protect it? We're Ben and Keira, two filmmakers traveling the world seeking to amplify the voices of extraordinary people who are devoting their lives to making the world a greener place. Here, in the Savo Conservation Area, protecting the inhabitants of Kenya's largest national park is no simple task. The conservation area, made up of Savo East and Savo West National Parks, is roughly the size of Switzerland and includes nearly half of Kenya's total protected area. Savo's open plains, dense bush, swamps, forests, and rivers offer sanctuary to Kenya's single largest population of elephants, rhinos, lions, giraffes, zebras, over 600 species of birds, and so much more. Across the continent, an estimated 40,000 men and women are on the front lines of conservation efforts, combating illegal poaching, protecting wildlife, and educating the public. The park is also home to one of the animal kingdom's rarest members. Known as big tuskers, these elephants have tusks so large they sweep the ground as they walk. Weighing over 100 pounds or 45 kilograms on each side. Alongside being a natural rarity, big tuskers are under constant threat from poachers supplying the illegal ivory trade. This combination means that only 25 big tuskers are known to be left in the world, and Savo Conservation Area houses the majority of them. With such an abundance of life and concentrated biodiversity, Savo's key challenges include ensuring the security of the park's borders and the safety of the wildlife within. To accomplish this, the Kenya Wildlife Service, or KWS, and their partners work alongside Savo Trust's nine highly trained wildlife ranger Tembo teams. Tembo is Swahili for elephant, and Savo Trust is an organization that works directly in the field to protect wildlife from both long-term and imminent threats, as well as empower local communities to be self-governing community-led wildlife conservancies. For the next few days, we're here in Savo working with Tembo Team 3 to witness firsthand what it takes to be a wildlife ranger and train for the upcoming wildlife ranger challenge. Commanded by works around the clock in support of the KWS's ground protection operations, including wildlife monitoring and deterring poachers and bushmeat hunters with their permanent presence. My name is Johnson Pakusa. I work with Savo Trust. I'm a ranger and I'm currently now the team leader for Tembo 3 mobile team. The team of seven is made up mostly of locals from the nearby Kamungi village, with the others originally from around the country. Despite their differences, maybe in upbringing or beliefs, the common thread that unites them all is their commitment to their work. There is always one thing bringing us together, that is the course or the training we undergo, all of us together. Through that course, that is where we learn unity. You have to train hard. Even their motto says train hard, fight easy. Actually, I trained my very hard and I became the best all-out ranger at 2018. This morning, we're heading out on patrol with the team to monitor five kilometres of their coverage area on foot, to pinpoint their starting location and keep in contact with other nearby Tembo teams. We geared up, filled up and planned our route through miles of the Savo bush, where the only roads are elephant paths. We are completely surrounded by quiet, only hearing the snap of twigs beneath our boots, the squawks of nearby birds and the hushed plans of the rangers as they examine the ground for tracks. When out in a large group, it's easy to forget the possibility of what lurks in the bush. Dense thickets with spiky limbs, enormous baobab trees reaching into the sky and an endless sea of red dust stretches for what feels like forever. Within 10 minutes, Johnson and the team spot a track they know all too well, human and very recent. As the team splits to search for the possible direction of what they believe to be a bushmeat hunter, we are all on high alert for any movement or sound that could indicate human life nearby. According to Johnson, the look and shape of the track indicates that the person was running from something. Had they heard us coming or was it something else? Ranger Stephen hears something. He whistles to notify the rest of his team and at the drop of a hat, the pursuit is on. For our safety, we were advised to keep our distance with one of the KWS rangers while the rest of the Tembo Team 3 investigated. After a few kilometers, the rangers notified us that they lost sight of the possible hunter's trail, but having logged the coordinates of where the tracks were spotted into the team's GPS, this area is to be closely monitored over the next few days. Bushmeat hunters are those that hunt and sell wild animals for profit. The animals are not caught to be eaten by families or villages, but are seen rather as an easy, albeit risky, means of income. Small animals that are easy for one person to carry are the most at risk. In Savo, this includes monkeys, diktiks, and other small species of antelopes. After rejoining one of the roads that intersects the park, we're now headed out on vehicle patrol. Vehicle patrol is essential for ranger teams to be able to get close enough to wildlife to monitor their numbers and assess them for any injuries, while still ensuring that both the ranger and animal safety is prioritized. Today, we encountered a herd of Savo's famous red bull elephants. Typically, after bathing or drinking, elephants spray themselves with Savo's plentiful reddish-orange, mineral-rich dust, which protects their skin from the harsh elements. Bushmeat hunters and poachers are not the only threat to wildlife in Savo, however. Climate change, echoed by soaring temperatures, decreased rainfall, drought, and biodiversity loss continue to threaten the complete extinction of both large and small species. Back at the team's barracks, we're understanding more and more why the men of Tembo Team 3 do what they do. Just take a look at this shrub, the branches and foliage of which a small animal like a dikdik or gerenuk would live off of. But look a little closer, and you'll see the type of deadly snares that poachers and bushmeat hunters set to catch their prey. A simple piece of wire is all that it takes for an animal to lose this fight. And it is not only small animals which fall victim to these simple snares. Johnson informed us that poachers will often hang them high in trees to catch large animals like giraffes, or slightly lower to catch medium-sized animals such as Why are we protecting? If we don't protect the endangered species, actually it will end up, we'll be watching just on TVs or through magazines, it will go to an extinction. Without wildlife rangers, the impact of humans on wildlife would be even greater, especially in remote areas like Savo. But Savo-Tembo teams can't do it alone, and value the support and insight of local communities in their work. Today we're visiting the Kamungi Conservancy, a community that borders the north of Savo West and acts as a crucial buffer to the protected areas, while also working toward fostering a culture of conservation and generating economic opportunities for the Wakamba people. The community conservancy model has been noted to be one of the most effective conservation initiatives in Kenya since the creation of the country's national parks in the 1940s. This morning, we met with Mofat, the community officer at Savo Trust, who works with the Kamungi Conservancy to establish educational programs for its residents and gets the locals involved in its new initiatives. So Kamungi Conservancy is a community conservancy that was started way back in 2013 by Savo Trust. The conservancy is made up of a total of 140 households, whereby community members have come together with the main objective being to protect and conserve wildlife. Through the partnership between Savo Trust and Kamungi Conservancy, a number of projects have been implemented. And here where we are is now the Ngiluni water tank. So through this water project, we have come up with another project that we are calling the permaculture project. The main purpose of this permaculture project is to improve the food security situation within Kamungi Conservancy. With its location on the border of the park, generations of residents whose primary income comes from agriculture, suffered at the hands of wildlife like elephants, antelope, and lions wandering onto their properties and eating their crops or livestock. This, coupled with residents' unexpected and often life-threatening encounters with local wildlife, over time fostered understandable fear and animosity among the community members. To combat this, one of MOFAT, the rangers, and Savo Trust's key responsibilities includes educating the community on what can be done to ensure both their protection and the protection of local wildlife. In using a proven method by Dr. Lucy King of Save the Elephants, Savo Trust and its team were able to put in place a simple yet ingenious invention to keep farmland safe and wildlife at bay using bees. Here in Kamungi, we have a beehive fence project. African elephants, they fear honeybees. So she come up with beehive fences as a way to mitigate a human-elephant conflict. The beehive fences have played a key role in allowing both humans and wildlife to coexist in the Kamungi area, but are also contributing to the self-sufficiency that the Conservancy model aims to create. The bees in the fences pollinate the farmer's fields and also produce honey for the local community to sell in small quantities for profit. To add on the beehive project, recently we did a honey processing room. This one, the one that you are seeing here. And also we use this place to train community members on honey processing. Now the community members started now valuing wildlife and that was made possible through tangible benefits. We can't achieve sustainable conservation without engaging the local communities. We can't. In addition to the physical changes the community members are experiencing, one of the most impactful aspects of being a Conservancy is the active involvement of Tembo Team 3 in education and protection for all ages. Being from the local community, one of their main role is being conservation champion, whereby now having undergone the training and understanding the benefits of wildlife conservation, they now spread the message of wildlife conservation to their fellow community members. They normally check into schools and some of these arrangers, they are alumni of these schools. They are known to the schools and they normally visit the schools as a way of nurturing young conservation champions. And that has worked very well because when these local communities, when they see one of their own being in front line in protection of wildlife, it helps to to win their support. The trusted members of the Kamungi Conservancy leadership work closely with the rangers too. This ensures that all members of the community feel that their concerns, questions, and beliefs are being taken into account. My name is Dominic Mutua Mwea. Through Kamungi Conservancy, we usually have monthly meetings and we usually choose one of them to come and talk to our people and then they create awareness and then they also share how much they are trying to help the community to solve the issue of human-wildlife conflict. The educators are now the community to see wildlife as an asset, not something just to distract, but something we need to take care of for the future as it's the only heritage we have inherited from our forefathers. Although Tembo Team 3 is made up of all men, mostly from the local community, a shared belief of many Kamungi residents is that the future is the active involvement of women. And then we involve the ladies, not only, you know, within our community it's only men. So the ladies are also feeling that we need also to be part of the rangers serving our community. And many women and girls across the community have already shown immense interest. I'm a member of Kamungi. What I can say to our servitors rangers is that they are doing a very good job. In fact, when you call them when there is a wildlife conflict, they do response quickly. That is the first thing. We as a community, we have improved due to employment of these rangers just because when there is insecurity in the community, the rangers, most of them, they are very comfortable with their job. When you call them, they do response quickly and they do their job with pleasure. Do you want to? Yeah, that's my prayer. As a team of only seven, a large part of the team's ability to be the eyes and ears of this part of Sarvan National Park relies on the help from community members who may see or hear things that the rangers may not. In a scout programme of sorts, community members can easily get in contact with rangers for a number of reasons. Whether looking to avoid human-wildlife conflict or to provide rangers with information of a poacher or bushmeat hunter nearby entering the park, the people certainly feel that this joint effort is making a difference. But there is still a long way to go. The job of rangers today is not possible without the support of the community, and many members are willing and ready to do so. However, Johnson knows that some of the team's greatest challenges still lie ahead. Actually, in old days, being a ranger, you're only entitled to protecting and conserving, but as day by day, things have changed. Nowadays, we do protection, we do monitoring and research at the same time. We do what we call community conservation education, creating an awareness outside the parks that is to the local communities, and that is by just getting the local communities to understand the importance of this thing we are protecting. So it isn't a simple task. In fact, some of them will just reject you. And maybe in cases where there is a human-wildlife conflict, it becomes very, very hard to convince and try to bring awareness to those persons. But actually, we are doing quite a good job through conservation education that is teaching them about the benefit of this wildlife in Kenya. This struggle, compared to recent years, is manageable, and the rangers are confident it can be overcome with time. In 2020, the work of rangers across the continent was brought to an abrupt halt when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Thousands of rangers lost their jobs or experienced devastating salary and resource cuts. As a result, poaching and bushmeat hunting spiked. Despite these setbacks, the work of wildlife rangers was allowed to continue later in the year thanks to international support in the form of the Wildlife Ranger Challenge. In 2020, the Wildlife Ranger Challenge was organized by Tusk and its partners, the Game Rangers Association of Africa and Natural State. Tusk is an international organization supporting the work of wildlife rangers across Africa. The challenge was also financially supported by the Scheinberg Relief Fund, an organization founded in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic to aid impacted individuals and communities. Culminating in a 21-kilometer half marathon, ranger teams physically and mentally prepare for weeks in advance, running with 22 kilograms of equipment on their backs and participating in mini challenges to see who can do the most push-ups or sit-ups in two minutes. On race day in 2020, over 2,000 supporters from 80 countries ran in solidarity with 100 ranger teams located across Africa, raising 10 million dollars, which included a generous match from the Scheinberg Relief Fund. In 2021, 125 teams raced, raising an additional 3 million dollars, which also included a generous match from the Scheinberg Relief Fund. Sarvo's Tembo Team 3 has competed in the Wildlife Ranger Challenge for the past two years. What they didn't expect in doing so, though, was the outpouring of support and further admiration received from their families and communities, especially in Kumungi. Training and preparations for this year's Wildlife Ranger Challenge are underway, and we're joining Tembo Team 3 to see how they physically prepare for such a gruelling mental and physical workout. This year, over 100 ranger teams from 15 African countries are gearing up to race to correct misconceptions on the role of rangers and to support the development of the ranger profession across the continent. Race day will coincide with the African Ranger Congress taking place in Botswana, at which Tusk and its partners intend to bring together delegates to take part in the challenge. The Scheinberg Relief Fund has again generously committed to matching donations up to one million dollars, enabling the Wildlife Ranger Challenge to continue to have a tremendous impact. To learn more, sign up to Race in Solidarity or donate, please visit wildliferangerchallenge.org. I can guarantee you that 100% Sarvo is secured. Actually, this is the largest conservation yard in Kenya. As we are rangers, we're asking ourselves, how can you protect the whole of Sarvo? How can you protect all of Sarvo's wildlife inside the park and outside the park? It's both the question that thousands of men and women across the continent ask themselves every day, and it's also one of the hardest to answer. With each new challenge these rangers may face, their work becomes more difficult, yet also more important than ever. Whether that's directly protecting wildlife from human interference, or working to offer long-term support to the local community, their love for their land and their people will forever unite them. We are doing it because we love it, because it is our job. Even if today I'm not in Sarvo, wherever I'll be, I'll always be protecting the wildlife. The Rangers of Sarvo Trust are only a few of the thousands of wildlife rangers that Tusk and its partners support. As a key donor to the Tusk Trust.