These female rangers risk their lives to protect nature. But who’s protecting them?

It’s 3am, pitch dark, and the cold is biting through my layers. I’m part of an ambush set up by a mixed anti-poaching team in Kenya. We have been sitting silently in the bush for hours, waiting for poachers to show up. Nobody has moved a muscle. My legs are cramping, I’m trying not to shiver, and my mind is fighting to stay alert.

It’s only afterward that I learn one of the women had started her period during the operation. There was no option for her to step away, no way of dealing with it until hours later. Even then, there was no bathroom and little privacy.

At a time when conservation often celebrates the heroism of frontline ranger work, we rarely talk about how differently women experience that frontline. And yet, we are increasingly asking female rangers to help solve some of the planet’s biggest environmental crises.

From reducing human-wildlife conflict to protecting biodiversity and strengthening climate resilience, rangers are increasingly recognized not just as conservation workers, but as planetary health workers—protecting ecosystems that ultimately support human wellbeing.

Over the last 13 years, and through founding World Female Ranger Week in 2021, a global initiative celebrating and supporting women on the conservation frontline, I’ve spent much of my time working alongside female rangers around the world. I’ve seen first-hand the impact they are making in conservation and community engagement, but I’ve also seen the immense challenges they face and how under-supported many still are. And yet, despite the scale of what’s being asked of them, women are estimated to make up only around 11 percent of the global ranger workforce.

“It sometimes feels like I have to do an entire job of code-switching to interact with them just in order to be able to do my actual job … The standard in a job that has been run by almost exclusively men is not a standard that is made for equality.”

- Silva Lanfranchi, Swiss ranger

“Rangers are like the medics, nurses, and community health workers that serve people and livestock, but they are on the frontlines of forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes, and seas, caring for nature,” says Catherine Machalaba, Planetary Health Scientist at global environmental nonprofit, The Nature Conservancy. “They are the eyes and ears that see when ecosystems and wildlife are healthy or sick. “We can’t overlook that female rangers often face unique mental and physical health threats in their work; it is essential to invest in their capacity and make sure they have the resources needed to stay safe while doing their jobs.”

Sometimes, the barriers are surprisingly basic. When South Africa’s pioneering all-female anti-poaching unit, the Black Mambas, first started patrolling, nobody had thought to include sports bras in their uniform. It may sound like a small detail, but when they are patroling up to 13 miles (20 kilometers) a day for weeks at a time, an unsupportive bra can cause back and shoulder pain, which, in some cases, has prevented them from doing their job properly. But no-one had stopped to ask: What do women actually need to do this job well?

Across different countries, female rangers have shared stories with me about inadequate sanitation, lack of privacy during remote deployments, pregnancy and maternity challenges, social stigma, and workplace cultures where speaking up can come at a high cost. The reality is that conservation, like many sectors, was largely built by and for men. Women have often had to adapt to systems that were never designed with them in mind.

In one country, which I won’t name to protect identities, I asked a team of female rangers on patrol why they couldn’t stay in the ‘better’ accommodation much closer to their operations base. “If we stay there, we risk being raped,” they told me. The threat, they explained, didn’t necessarily come from outsiders, but from men within the wider system around them.

Until then, I had imagined the biggest dangers of working as a ranger would be external—wild animals, organised criminal syndicates, opportunist poachers, or remote landscapes. I hadn’t fully considered that for some women, the threat could also come from inside the systems meant to support them.

As I spoke to more female rangers and dug deeper into the research, I realized this was not an isolated concern. Studies examining women working in conservation have documented experiences of sexual harassment, intimidation and gender-based violence in countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, often involving colleagues or people in positions of authority. While many organizations are working to improve safeguarding policies and reporting mechanisms, the reality is that for some women, personal safety remains a challenge both on and off patrol.

Silva Lanfranchi, a Swiss ranger in the Glaubenberg marshland in central Switzerland’s Obwalden canton, protecting fragile moorland ecosystems and biodiversity, described a different but equally familiar challenge in her work as a ranger. “Getting ‘in’ to the boys clubs is the biggest challenge,” she tells me. “95 percent of the people I work with are men.”

Lanfranchi tells me about the constant behavioral changes required to navigate these environments. “It sometimes feels like I have to do an entire job of code-switching to interact with them just in order to be able to do my actual job,” she says. One comment she made struck a chord with me: “The standard in a job that has been run by almost exclusively men is not a standard that is made for equality.”

Perhaps no story better captures both the courage and personal cost of speaking out than that of Raabia Hawa, a Kenyan ranger and the founder and director of Ulinzi Africa Foundation, East Africa’s first nonprofit to focus on ranger welfare and empowerment. For years, Raabia has fought to protect the ecologically critical Tana Delta, a vast 50,000-acre wetland ecosystem along Kenya’s coast.

Designated as a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, the delta spans diverse habitats including riverine forests, mangrove swamps, and pristine beaches. It serves as a vital sanctuary for threatened wildlife and is an important elephant corridor. When plans emerged to compulsorily acquire large areas of forest for development, Hawa took on a battle few thought she could win.

The battle continues, but the lesson feels important: Against the odds, one woman is standing up to a male-dominated system far bigger than herself to help protect a landscape critical to both wildlife and people.

What followed, she tells me, were four years of harassment, death threats, intimidation, character assassination, targeted smear campaigns, and loss of donors, not to mention enormous personal strain. At times, concerns for her safety became so serious that she temporarily left Kenya for protection. But she returned. As she later explained, she could not effectively lead her team of 12 male rangers from abroad.

On arrival, she found a mining company pushing its way in, in pursuit of titanium discovered deep within sand dune forests that elephants call home. Hawa pushed back, tirelessly speaking out against anything that threatens the elephants. She tells me she is “still holding on to a never-ending hope for justice. Justice for wildlife, justice for communities, justice for this forgotten forest”. The battle continues, but the lesson feels important: Against the odds, one woman is standing up to a male-dominated system far bigger than herself to help protect a landscape critical to both wildlife and people. “Here’s to women, for wildlife, for justice,” she says.

Female rangers have taught me that courage is often quiet, built through consistent effort, and continuing despite systems that don’t fully support them. The work is hard, but their passion for the natural world and their dedication to protecting it runs deep. Across continents, female rangers are protecting savannahs, forests, oceans and ecosystems that the rest of us depend on.

Through World Female Ranger Week, we have sought to move the conversation beyond celebrating female rangers to understanding and addressing the realities they face. By creating a global platform for women to share their experiences, the campaign has highlighted issues ranging from ill-fitting equipment and inadequate facilities to security risks, social stigma, menstrual health, and barriers to career progression. The initiative has also provided direct support through grants, elevated role models, and fostered a growing network of over 6,000 female rangers globally. In many cases, simply making these challenges visible has helped drive important conversations within conservation organizations about what more can be done to support and retain women in the profession.

Organizations such as Universal Ranger Support Alliance, the International Ranger Federation and Game Rangers’ Association of Africa are pushing for minimum standards around ranger welfare, healthcare, insurance and safety. Some conservation organizsations are also introducing gender-responsive policies, from maternity support and menstrual health provision to female-specific uniforms and accommodation. The challenge now is scaling what works so that support becomes the norm rather than the exception.

The conservation sector has made progress, but the stories in this article make one thing clear: We still have a long way to go. If we value the women protecting our wildlife, wild places and communities, we must ensure they have the safety, support, equipment, opportunities and recognition they deserve.

Find out more

– Get involved with World Female Ranger Week here

– Follow and connect on Instagram: @worldfemalerangerweek | @howmanyelephants | @hollybudge

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