The advancing loss of nature is a universal problem; therefore, universal collaboration is required to save it. Yet, women around the world face discrimination that prevents them from contributing to conservation efforts.
The World Wildlife Fund’s Life On The Frontline 2019 report found that less than 10% of rangers worldwide are women. The World Economic Forum notes that only 30% of International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission experts are women. Last year, the Nature Conservancy discovered that of their authors with published scientific papers, just 36% were women, and less than 2% were women from the Global South.
However, when women contribute to protecting nature, it makes a big difference.
In 2019, a study published by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder analyzed mandates ensuring a certain number of women have leadership positions in local governing bodies in Indonesia, Peru, and Tanzania.
“We found that the groups with the gender quota reduced their [tree] harvesting rate far more when the incentive was introduced and also distributed the payments for conserving more equally,” Nathan Cook, lead author, revealed in a news release.
According to the Brookings Institute, having women in even higher levels of leadership makes an even bigger difference, resulting in the creation of stricter climate policies, protection of more land areas, and ratification of more environmental treaties.
Photo Courtesy Blue Sky Fund
The potential impact of involving women in the climate fight is global. According to Project Drawdown, increasing investment in family planning and girls’ education could reduce carbon emissions by nearly 68.90 gigatons between 2020 and 2050. Fortunately, several unique projects around the world incorporate or center on the work of women.
Rwanda
Women and mountain gorillas have found destinies intertwined in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park. After moving with her husband, Athanasie Mukabizimungu found herself living five miles away from the nearest water source, a lake. And she was the one responsible for fetching it.
“In our tradition, women are custodians of all tasks related to water use,” she remembers to Wild Earth Allies. “For families without water tanks, women are the ones who spend hours looking for water.” However, this also required that she pass through and disturb the homes of local mountain gorillas.
Photo Courtesy Jane Goodall Institute
She, therefore, took leadership of a community project to produce residential rainwater harvest tanks, simultaneously providing people with a more convenient water source and protecting primates by removing the need to enter their habitats. Women-led cooperative Imbereheza Gahunga — a name Athanasie suggested because it means “better future” — was backed by Wild Earth Allies and a grant from the Newman’s Own Foundation to carry on that work in a pilot phase that resulted in 50 water tanks providing water daily for 600 people.
One of the primary benefits of the program is a decrease from the 78% of children that reportedly missed school before the arrival of the tanks. “I don’t want my children or any child to miss school because they are fetching water far from their homes,” Athanasie explained to One Earth. “With water tanks, our household well-being improves, and we don’t go into the park to collect water, so gorillas aren’t threatened by our people anymore.” It has also improved people’s health and hygiene and gorillas’ habitat quality.
Photo Courtesy Wild Earth Allies
In 2022, Wild Earth Allies launched a revolving loan fund for the collective. Financing provided in the pilot phase enabled 50 female members of Imbereheza Gahunga to rent land to grow potatoes, which they could then sell to cover healthcare and other expenses. Within one year, all the women had paid back the loan.
Zimbabwe And Kenya
Damien Mander is a former Australian special forces soldier and the founder of Akashinga, which means “the brave ones” in the Shona language; the organization was formerly known as the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. In 2017, he introduced 16 women as the first Akashinga Rangers, who work with their communities in Zimbabwe to combat poaching and the illegal wildlife trade.
Photo Courtesy ADRIAN STEIRN
One such woman, Wadzanai “Wadza” Munemo, entered an arranged marriage at age 16 after her mother’s death and has since raised her children alone. She now thrives as an Akashinga Ranger supervisor, where she also serves as father and mother to her “little rangers,” as she explained in an Akashinga newsletter interview: “Listen to instructions, act in the way you have been taught, work hard, and use your earnings to invest in your future so that you, too, can have the advancements I have had.”
Since its launch, Akashinga has grown to manage more than 11 million acres and has reduced elephant poaching, in particular, by 90%.
In 2023 alone, Akashinga Rangers went on 802 patrols across 5,776 miles, recording 1,692 wildlife sightings.
“If animals are now being seen in greater numbers, that is a sign that natural habitats are being safeguarded and they don’t feel threatened,” Sergeant Margaret “Maggie” Darawanda noted in this year’s first quarterly report. The rangers also arrested 286 people for illegal wildlife crimes, which saw the recovery of 93 tusks and 15 pangolins, of which six lived and were successfully returned to the wild.
Meanwhile, black rhino populations in Kenya are critically endangered, having seen their numbers decrease by 96% over the past two decades. Inspired by the Akashinga model and working with Mander, the Zeitz foundation is creating one of the world’s biggest rhino sanctuaries. It is all part of the Kenya Rhino Range Expansion Plan, the first phase of which will see the Segera Rhino Sanctuary built across 70,000 acres — bigger than Singapore.
A key component of the plan is community involvement to ensure a safe wildlife landscape and strengthened rural economies. In 2019, the Zeitz Foundation rolled out the All-Women Anti-Poaching Ranger Academy, starting with its first graduating class of 12 women in September of that year in a ceremony attended by former Minister of Tourism Najib Balala.
Through long selection processes and months of rigorous training, the academy located on the Segera Conservancy has produced numerous cohorts of female rangers.
Around the same time, Team Lioness launched out of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). More than eighty Masaii women make up the unit that patrols 150,000 hectares, seeking to protect cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, lions, and other wildlife around Amboseli National Park. These women have a deep connection to their communities, making them valuable to conservation efforts despite the patriarchal nature of their societies.
“I’ve done what I can to change the way men perceive us and show them that that is not who we are,” Purity Lakara described in an interview with IFAW. “They now see that we can also do it. For me, being a Team Lioness means a lot because it is my responsibility to take care of our wildlife and our environment. I have a big role to play in the area of work and also in the community.”
This series will be continued with a closer look at Latin America.
