The Women Reshaping the Ranger Profession

Atuwa had never been more than three metres below the ocean surface. She snorkelled, saw fish from a distance, but had never learned to dive. When she took a job as Zanzibar’s first female marine ranger with Wild Impact, the people around her had questions. Why would a woman take work that meant going into deep water? Marine conservation, they told her, was a man’s job.

That was 2023. Atuwa is now a trained diver, a licensed skipper, and can weld metal to build artificial reefs. She has grown corals in nurseries, transplanted them onto damaged reefs, and installed Reef Stars, star-shaped structures placed where coral has died to give new life something to grow on. She has also become a mother of two. Her husband, a boda-boda rider, has come to understand and support the work she loves.

“In the past, no women were doing this work, but now there are women,” she says. “People would also say that working with coral was not a woman’s job, and that I was trying to do a man’s job.”

Tolase Chirwa from Frankfurt Zoological Society North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia grew up watching poachers pass through her community and take what belonged to it. Becoming a ranger, she says, was a way to protect it with her own hands. She now works as a Control Room Operator, monitoring patrols and coordinating responses across one of the country’s most important conservation areas. She is one of 35 women in a workforce of 168.

In South Africa, the Black Mambas are the world’s first officially-formed, registered and recognised all-female anti-poaching unit. Established in 2013 by Transfrontier Africa NPC, the team of 24 wildlife rangers and seven environmental educators patrols two protected areas without weapons. Their approach has reshaped what an anti-poaching unit can be, with a focus on data collection, crime deterrence, visual policing, intelligence and community conservation.

Sergeant Tsakane Nxumalo joined without any prior interest in ranger work. “I will say something that might surprise you,” she says. “I have never wanted to be a ranger. However, when I heard of this opportunity to train and become one of the Black Mambas, I decided I would give it a chance. I fell in love with nature, conservation and environmental education.”

Together, these three teams represent something the wider sector is only beginning to reckon with.

What still gets in the way

Fewer than one in ten rangers worldwide are women. In Africa, roughly 4,500 women work in the profession. The number is growing, but the gaps in the daily work have not closed as quickly.

“The biggest ones are equipment and facilities,” Tolase says. “Sometimes gear is made for men’s sizes, and we don’t have safe, separate accommodation in the field.”

Then there is the mindset. “Some people still doubt that women can patrol long distances or handle dangerous situations. But once they work with us, they see we are just as committed.”

The Black Mambas describe how that same doubt plays out inside the workplace. “Sometimes our male colleagues do not take women’s ideas and suggestions seriously,” they say. “Decisions are made based on designations and status, and unfortunately male solidarity, but important details get ignored.” The result, they add, is work that eventually has to be redone.

For Atuwa, the mindset was the first obstacle before she ever got in the water. Her community questioned whether she should be doing the work at all. As a Muslim woman, she also had to think about how to dress and move at sea in a way that met both the demands of the job and the expectations of her culture. She wears a wetsuit to dive, then changes back into her usual clothing when she comes ashore.

The Black Mambas describe the same kind of resistance from further back in time. When they started 13 years ago, their parents were scared they would never return from the field alive. Their friends told them to take an office job. Men around them were convinced women were not made for this work. “Today, our parents tell us not to give up,” they say. “Today, our friends want the same job. Today, our partners are proud of what we do.”

Physical training is another concern that gets less attention. Some ranger programmes still use punishing drills that damage bodies before careers even begin. “Many of us have damaged knees that now affect our work,” the Black Mambas team says. “The better solution would be to make a ranger run or do sit ups, anything that benefits them in the long run and makes them stronger, so that they can do the job well.”

None of this is unusual. Speak to female rangers across the continent and versions of the same story come up. Kit that doesn’t fit. Bunkhouses that were not built with women in mind. Training that hurts more than it helps. Assumptions about what the job is and who is meant to do it.

What support looks like

All three teams describe workplaces where these challenges are being taken seriously rather than ignored.

Wild Impact trained Atuwa to dive, to skipper a boat, to weld. Without that training, she says, “I would just have been going to work and being afraid because there is the deep water.” She is now the reason other women in her community are considering the same career, something that would have felt unlikely a few years ago.

At Frankfurt Zoological Society in North Luangwa, the picture is similar in intent. Tolase describes proper female uniforms, a clear reporting process for any ranger who feels unsafe, and mentorship pairings between senior and junior women rangers. Human rights training is built into induction, so every ranger understands both their own rights and their responsibilities towards the communities they serve.

At Transfrontier Africa NPC, which runs the Black Mambas, the practical support runs further still: separate bathrooms and shared rooms for two, a strict policy on who enters the compound, family days that let rangers’ children visit safely, and six months of maternity leave, which is twice what the South African government currently covers. Female supervisors, sergeants and emerging managers work within the unit. Leadership and further training are encouraged and funded.

“Since we started safeguarding training, I’ve seen a big change,” Tolase says. “Rangers communicate better, handle conflict without force, and communities are more willing to share information with us.”

These details are the difference between a woman staying in the profession and quietly leaving it.

The wider effort

Individual organisations can only do so much on their own. This is where the Ranger Welfare and Standards Initiative, started by Tusk and the Game Rangers Association of Africa, comes in. The Initiative works to raise the floor across the sector, backing implementation of the International Ranger Federation’s Code of Conduct as a minimum standard and supporting human rights training that means something in practice rather than existing only on paper.

The Wildlife Ranger Challenge sits alongside this work as its most visible partner. It raises money, but it also puts female ranger teams on a public stage where the wider world can see them, count them, and start asking why there are not more of them.

For Sergeant Tsakane of the Black Mambas, taking part carries a specific weight. “I am celebrating all rangers and what we have achieved,” she says. “Women rangers who are showing up and stepping in and honouring those who had been there before us but no longer share our planet with us. It feels inspiring yet humbling that I can leave a mark on somebody else’s life by being a wildlife ranger.”

What comes next

Female ranger teams across the continent are asking for the same practical things: more training, more employment, kit that fits, and safe housing. They want career paths that lead beyond entry-level ranger positions and into leadership, training and specialist roles. They want childcare support, because women in this profession are often also mothers. And they want physical training that builds bodies rather than breaks them.

For a sector shaped for a long time by assumptions about who the work belongs to, none of this is abstract. It shows up in the fit of a uniform, the size of a bunkhouse, the tone of a meeting, the wording of a policy. It shows up in who lines up for the Wildlife Ranger Challenge each year, and who they are showing the world.

Atuwa, asked what she would tell women thinking about ranger work, was clear.

“I would tell them not to give up on this kind of work, even when people tell them that it is difficult or that it is not a job for women.”

About the Wildlife Ranger Challenge

Now in its seventh year, the Wildlife Ranger Challenge is organised by Tusk and the Game Rangers Association of Africa. It runs from July to September each year. Rangers take part in a series of physical and mental tests, building towards a 21-kilometre race on 19 September where they carry up to 22 kg of kit (10 kg for women). Since it launched in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Challenge has raised more than US$25 million for ranger welfare, equipment and training, and brought together over 11,500 rangers across the continent.

Back a ranger

The Wildlife Ranger Challenge is supported by founding donor Mark Scheinberg, who match funds $1 million dollars, alongside other match funding partners including the Disney Conservation Fund, Defender, EJF Philanthropies , Marriot International and Tara Getty Foundation who help the campaign go even further this year.

Any donations will be match funded, so your support goes twice as far.