Dear friends,
In our
lifetime, we could live in a world with no elephants, rhinos,
or gorillas.
It’s heartbreaking -- but there’s one
group of heroes risking everything to stop this slide towards
extinction:
wildlife rangers. They save
thousands of endangered animals every single day. It’s
incredibly dangerous work --
every four days another ranger
is killed. And they do it with almost no training and
equipment -- half of them don’t even have boots!
Now
we have an amazing chance to revolutionise ranger forces all
over the world.
The Thin Green Line, who work with
the world’s top rangers, are asking for our help to train and
equip thousands of Wildlife Guardians -- elite protectors
to deploy to Africa’s worst poaching hotspots. 300 rangers
with this training virtually stopped elephant poaching in one
vast area of Kenya. And together, we can create 1,000 new
Wildlife Guardians every single year!
This could be
one of Avaaz’s greatest legacies to the world -- a global
wildlife protection force supported by people everywhere. If
50,000 of us donate right now, the first Wildlife Guardians
will start in weeks! An elephant is murdered by poachers
every 26 minutes --
chip in now:
Without
rangers, we’d have lost the fight for our elephants, rhinos,
and other wildlife long ago. But we’re still
losing these
majestic creatures at alarming rates -- 3 rhinos a day in
South Africa alone! -- and scientists warn that if we don’t
stop the slide to extinction soon, it will be too late.
Together,
we can turn it around, but we don’t
have much time.
Under the Wildlife Guardian plan,
training and equipping a ranger costs as little as
$600! In 12 months, we can train enough Guardians to help
protect 124,000 elephants on 25 MILLION acres across Kenya,
Uganda, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Then, we’ll increase our impact
by taking this awesome idea to ranger forces all over the
world. Rangers have been dreaming of this for years -- chip in
to make it happen right now!
It’s
heartbreaking to imagine that our grandchildren could never
know these magnificent giants. The clock is ticking to save
the wildlife we love -- and rangers are the way to do it.
Avaaz is probably the only movement in the world that can
raise enough, fast enough for this work to get underway
immediately. Let’s make it happen.
With hope and
determination,
Allison, Bert, Ricken, Martyna,
Marigona and the rest of the Avaaz team
More
information:
A great overview the heroism and plight of
the rangers -- Another day, another dead wildlife ranger.
Where is the outrage? (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/10/protect-wildlife-rangers-murder
The website of our lead partner and a world leader in
training rangers - The Thin Green Line Foundation - Projects
https://thingreenline.org.au/our-projects/
A Forgotten Step in Saving African Wildlife:
Protecting the Rangers (NY Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/science/a-forgotten-step-in-saving-african-wildlife-protecting-the-rangers.html
Rangers across Africa Feel Lack of Equipment,
Training, and Support (WWF)
https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/new-survey-rangers-across-africa-feel-lack-of-equipment-training-and-support