Over One Thousand Park Rangers Die in 10 Years Protecting Our Parks and Wildlife

The Thin Green Line Foundation found that reported deaths of rangers killed by poachers between 2009 and 2016 was 595 rangers, plus hundreds more of unknown rangers were killed in developing countries which go unreported. In 2017, over 100 rangers were reported killed, and 2018 is on track for the same, with nearly two deaths per week.

“If you don’t want to call it a war, give me another name and I’ll use it, but that’s pretty much what’s happening in a lot of places around the world.”

   - The Thin Green Line Foundation

Two-thirds of these rangers die at the hands of wildlife poachers. Protecting wildlife is no longer just a case of stopping poaching by poor local villagers. Illegal wildlife crime is now estimated to be worth more than $20 billion per year, ranked only behind drugs, weapons and human trafficking in the criminal value chain.

Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has lost 150 rangers in the past decade. It is the world’s most dangerous park. Many of the rangers were killed in attacks by the FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda, the Rwandan Hutu rebel group), and the Mai-Mai (a range of different militia groups formed during Congo’s wars since 1996).

Jobogo Mirindi, a ranger from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, showed a photograph of thirty-odd of his colleagues. Six rangers’ heads were circled in red. They were the only ones that had survived since the photograph was taken five years earlier.

Five wildlife rangers and three other men working in wildlife protection have lost their lives in four separate countries in the past month, highlighting the numerous hazards rangers face.

Virunga Park Rangers Charles Paluku Syaira, Jonas Paluku Malyani and Pacifique Musubao Fikirini were murdered on the morning of Monday 14 August 2018 during a routine patrol around the park, which is home to critically endangered mountain gorillas. 

The incident brings the total number of rangers killed in the field in 2017 to eight, according to Virunga park authorities. More than 160 rangers have died protecting the park in the last 20 years.

“The political and security crisis DRC is experiencing has hit park rangers particularly hard as they are protecting an area that armed groups are using to regroup, hide and resupply,” said Melanie Gouby, a journalist whose investigation into a British oil company’s illegal activities in Virunga National Park was part of the Oscar-nominated documentary Virunga. “Their work is more dangerous than ever.”

Virunga National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the most biologically diverse protected areas in Africa. It is home to three species of great apes, and other endangered species including okapi and elephants – though there are now fewer than 400 elephants in the park. Park rangers work to protect these animals from poachers, and the latest deaths continue a tragic pattern of brutal ambushes against rangers.

Gouby added: “If the crisis deepens, the wildlife the rangers are protecting is at risk of being further depleted as people turn to poaching for meat and for trafficking, and the rangers who are on the frontline of that fight will also be increasingly at risk.

“It is important they receive the support they need to be able to keep protecting Virunga in the face of growing pressure,” she said.