Damien Mander Creates Female 'Akashinga' Anti-Poaching Force In Zimbabwe's Phundundu Wildlife Park

Damien Mander Creates Female 'Akashinga' Anti-Poaching Force In Zimbabwe's Phundundu Wildlife Park

Faye Cuevas is not alone in recruiting women as wildlife rangers, responsible for patrolling and even shooting if necessary, ivory poachers. In September 2018, the BBC featured former Special Forces sniper, Australian Damien Mander, who says he found his ‘higher calling’ protecting wildlife in Africa. Knowing what key global military experts, including America’s own top military brass believes, Mander specifically focused on creating a female anti-poaching force in Zimbabwe’s Phundundu Wildlife Park nature reserve a 115 square mile former trophy hunting area that is part of a larger ecosystem home to some 11,000 elephants.

Though women rarely serve as rangers in Africa — a reality that Faye Cuevas also confronted in Kenya — Mander believes that putting the well-being of wildlife in their expertly trained hands could usher in a new way of carrying out conservation. In Mander’s vast experience, he believes that women rangers will create conservation practices that are far less violent, while empowering women and improving communities in the process.

“There’s a saying in Africa, ‘If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a nation’,” Mander says. “We’re seeing increasing evidence that empowering women is one of the greatest forces of change in the world today.”

Mander is hitting roadblocks, especially in his vision for 4,500 female rangers protecting wildlife across Africa. You can imagine the havoc he’s creating!

Girl Baby Elephants Become Proxy Matriarchs At Kenya's Reteti Elephant Sanctuary

Girl Baby Elephants Become Proxy Matriarchs At Kenya's Reteti Elephant Sanctuary

Sunday night has been elephant update night for Anne. My head is swimming in new information and stories. Before I venture out, let me share this charming, empathetic story in National Geographic about Kenya’s Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Kenya.

A few weeks ago, AOC featured the entire short virtual reality film ‘My Africa’, narrated by Lupita Nyong’o and set among the Samburu people. The region of the film and this May, 2017 article includes the Turkana, Rendille, Borana, and Somali peoples — besides the Samburu. Knowledgeable about many of the civil wars that have ravaged Africa (and America) I’m not familiar with tensions in this area. The point of our story and ‘My Africa’ is how these ethnic groups are working together today to strengthen their communities while protecting the estimated 6,000 elephants, according to National Geographic, who share the land.

In fact, I pursued the article because of this beautiful image of Mary Lengees, one of Reteti’s first female elephant keepers and Shyian. Upon landing at National Geographic, I felt a poignant moment for Shaba, a little female elephant who is now the boss. So much has been written about the great elephant matriarchs, strong leaders who sleep hardly at all to protect their herd.

The notion of a baby girl elephant’s natural instincts taking hold, making her the leader and caretaker long before her time is due reminds me of stories of young girls with countless siblings — too many for mom to manage — or even orphan girls with young brothers and sisters who suddenly rise to positions of leadership, almost out of instinct.

Faye Cuevas Brings Higher Intelligence To Africa's War On Elephant Poaching

Faye Cuevas Brings Higher Intelligence To Africa's War On Elephant Poaching

Calling herself "the accidental conservationist," (Faye) Cuevas can pinpoint the moment she realized that she wanted to fight poaching.

"The first time that I saw an elephant in the wild was in Amboseli National Park here in Kenya two years ago," she said in Feb. 2016. "It was life-changing."

"At the current rate of elephant decline, my 6-year-old daughter won't have an opportunity to see an elephant in the wild before she's old enough to vote," she said. "Which just is unacceptable to me, because if that is the case then we have nothing to blame that on but human apathy and greed."

"The Kenya Wildlife Service and other many conservation groups are doing fantastic conservation work," Cuevas said. "However, the reality is that there are other challenges — from a cyber perspective, from a global criminal network perspective — that really necessitate security approaches integrated into conservation strategies."

Enter tenBoma -- or '10 homesteads' -- which uses technology to pull together diverse sources of information, from rangers to conservation groups. She analyzes the data to "create value in information in ways that it rises to the level of intelligence."