The PAMS Foundation was recently granted provisional membership of the International Ranger Federation. With this new association and mandate given for the part of Africa in which we are working, a Ranger Support Programme is planned for Tanzania and its neighbouring countries. This programme will focus primarily on providing much needed equipment and training to rangers, in particular community rangers (village game scouts).

In many areas, poaching has reached unprecedented levels, and the community game scout teams are hopelessly outgunned, out-trained, under-resourced and ill equipped. Much of the poaching is targeting elephants, where these majestic giants are either shot or poisoned (often poisoning even young animals and many other non target species too) for their ivory. There is also a need to educate the local communities concerning the dangers of eating meat from poisoned animals and fish which is sometimes sold to them by the commercial poachers infiltrating the area.

The PAMS Foundation has therefore formed a partnership with an Australian Rangers Associations known as PAWA (Protected Area Workers Association). PAWA is working with the PAMS Foundation to help equip community rangers in Tanzania and Mozambique. In April 2010, PAWA supplied First Aid kits, GPSs, digital cameras, batteries and chargers to PAMS Foundation who then distributed this to the relevant village game scouts. Identifying, sourcing and handing over of equipment will be an ongoing part of this programme.

Through the Ranger Support Programme, Janine Krook of South Africa also recently made a cash donation to the PAMS Foundation which has been used to purchase 12 brand new hardy bicycles. These will be used as an incentive to help motivate the volunteer village game scouts working within the Mbarang’andu Wildlife Management Area (WMA). A performance-based competition is being run between the seven village scout teams over a two month period. The team that shows the best ‘anti-poaching’ performance over this period, will win the bicycles.

In an effort to raise the profile of the ranger profession in this region of Africa and highlight key challenges and the importance of their jobs to the public and to the government leaders, the PAMS Foundation bid for and won the opportunity to host the 7th World Rangers Congress, in Tanzania in 2012. To find out more click here.

ANY DONATIONS AND EQUIPMENT FOR THIS PROJECT WILL BE MUCH VALUED AND APPRECIATED