A handful of rangers and a broken-down truck is hardly sufficient to protect the world’s remaining, endangered wild animals and tropical forests from the organised, lethal and relentless threat posed by global poaching syndicates and logging gangs.
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But for the last rhinos, orangutans and tigers in national parks and indigenous lands across Asia, an underfunded, rag-tag band of park rangers is often their best chance of survival and humanity’s only hope of saving Earth’s most magnificent beasts and spectacular wild places.
This is the sorry state of nature conservation in 2024. Pitiful amounts of money are going to the park wardens on the front lines of an unrelenting war against poaching and illegal logging which has pushed many animals towards extinction and damaged tropical forest cover, even within supposedly protected places.
It is not just the poachers and loggers the animals need to fear but a conservation industry that has become corporatised and too cautious. Officials are happier to jet off to global conferences and support lofty goals such as protecting 30 per cent of the world by 2030 rather than do the dirty work of protecting the 3 per cent or so that remains as wilderness in developing nations, much of it national parks.
At Global Conservation, we spend on average US$100,000 to US$200,000 a year to help protect a national park. This includes providing the equipment rangers need to do their job. We implement global park defence and community protection initiatives to stop poaching and illegal land clearance. They involve an integrated system that uses local people, technology and training.
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From Illegal logging to tree conservation: one man’s journey to help end deforestation in Vietnam
From Illegal logging to tree conservation: one man’s journey to help end deforestation in Vietnam
We create national parks where no tree is cut or animal killed and indigenous territories where both the forests and wildlife can prosper alongside people. As a result, tree cover is protected and animal populations can rebound.
