 welcome everyone and thank you so much for joining today. It's fantastic to see so many of you here. My name is Lyv, I am a researcher in the Biodiversity Team at the International Institute for Environment and Development or IED. It's my absolute pleasure to welcome you all to this webinar today that will showcase examples of community toe based rangers in anti-poaching initiatives and yna y bydd y cyfnod i'r cyfnod yma i ddweud y cyfnod i'r cyfnod llaw ffyrdd. Felly, fel y gallwch chi'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Felly, yna'r gweithio'r gweithio'r Gweithredig Dyllis Rhyw, cyfnod i'r gweithio'r teamledaeth ym Mhwyafolol Llywodraeth i iid, IOCN's Sustainable Use and Livelihood Specialist Group, or SULI. Dyllis will be giving a brief introduction to how IID and IOCN SULI are supporting community engagement in tackling IWT, including the People Not Poaching Platform. I will then introduce our speakers who are going to provide different examples of community-based ranges, including community-led patrols and all women ranger units. Then Holly Dublin, who is IID senior associate and member of the IOCN SULI steering committee, will then moderate a panel discussion on challenges and opportunities to supporting community-based ranger programmes. We will then end with a Q&A with all participants. Dyllis, over to you. Many thanks, Liv. Just as a very brief introduction, this is a joint webinar between IID and the IOCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group. We've been working together for about the last five years, really focusing on the role of communities in tackling illegal wildlife trade through a number of joint initiatives. This initiative, through which this webinar is hosted, is the latest in that series. This webinar is coming from a project that's funded by the UK Government's Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund called Learning and Action for Community Engagement Against IWT. That project is all about trying to increase the profile of local communities, improve dialogue between communities and governments and NGOs about how best to engage them in managing illegal wildlife trade. As part of that, we've set up a web portal called People Not Poaching. Through that web portal, we've been collecting case studies of initiatives that have engaged communities in tackling illegal wildlife trade and documenting the lessons from those case studies, what works, what doesn't work, and why, most importantly. We've now got over 100 case studies from all around the world. One of the most common strategies that comes out in those case studies is involving communities as ranges. That's something that we've been really interested to delve into more detail into and examine the different types of community ranges and the different types of approaches that have been used. So there are many examples of these kinds of initiatives on the People Not Poaching website, and I really do encourage you to go and have a look at that if you haven't done so already. It's just very simply www.peoplenotpoaching.org, and you can browse through all the case studies from all sorts of different types of community engagement initiatives, not just ranges, but you'll find these range of examples there in that database. Next slide please, Liv. So as we've been collecting our case studies, we've identified four kind of key approaches for how communities have been engaged as ranges. So this is not a sort of exclusive typology, but these are the four key categories that the case studies seem to fall into. Next, the most common one is community ranges working in partnership with formal law enforcement agencies, so either with government ranges or with private sector ranges or those employed by NGOs and some kind of training and partnership scheme existing between the two of them. The second type is where communities themselves have decided to protect the area in which they're living. They've set up their own range of schemes, their own patrols, so these are self-motivated, self-generated. Then we've got a few case studies where ex-poachers have been specifically targeted and encouraged to become ranges as a way of engaging them in tackling illegal wildlife trade rather than being involved in illegal wildlife trade. And then finally, we've got a number of cases of all women ranger groups, and I think there's quite a lot of publicity about these in Africa, but there are also all women ranger groups in other parts of the world and we'll be hearing about one in Indonesia in particular as well as an example from Africa. So, as I say, these aren't exclusive categories, there are plenty of other types, but these are the kinds that we'll be hearing about in the case studies that are going to be presented in the webinar today. So, I hope you enjoy hearing about some of these and for more details, please do just go on the website and have a look at the rest of our case studies. Well, thank you so much, Dyllis. So, we now have five fantastic examples of community-based rangers to share with you today, and as Dyllis said, each one of these fits into the categories that she has just discussed. So, first up is Dimitri's Ardurio, who's project and data manager for the Prailang community network, who are a self-formed group who patrols the Prailang forest in Cambodia against illegal logging. So, it's great to have you with us today. Could you please tell us a little bit about the Prailang community network and about how it came about? Hello from my side as well. So, Prailang community network, it's a network of villagers of communities that saw the problem coming in their forest. There are many, many resin tuppers that were collecting the NDP in the forest and saw illegal logging coming on their site in their ancestral lands. So, the network of communities that started to patrol the forest unofficially at first and catching loggers red-handed and trying to confiscate equipment. Recording data with pen and paper, so there was too much data recorded, too much work done there to go unnoticed, and we saw an opportunity. We offered to them a kind of innovative approach. We offered to them to somehow standardize their data and to make more official the work that they were doing. So, 15 years after their so much efforts, we formed an innovative partnership that had in the center of the partnership, which was the Prailang community network. And all around them was a supportive network of civil society organizations and NGOs and university and IT company. And we offered them to create a smartphone app in order to legitimize more their data and have it all collected in a place where it can be accessed and used for advocacy or for proof of the situation in Prailang forest. Therefore, we created this app that is able to document mainly like their rich biodiversity, their illegal logging and some interactions that they have either with loggers or with government officials. And in the beginning was all going very well. There were some advocacy campaigns launched and their data were published in yearly monitoring reports summarizing the situation in the forest. And initially also government rangers were joining the patrols and helping. However, at some point things turn a little bit tricky and corruption in Cambodia did not allow this scheme to continue. So, right now in Cambodia there are, and after our last year, the release of the latest report. So, since last year, and after we present our data on the forestation, the government starts aiming us, aiming PLCN personally, but they are the real heroes and they are the ones that play their lives. And trying to target them for the monitoring that they are doing, legitimizing them, and in the end they prohibit their entrance to their forest in essence. So, they are presenting data that PLCN is not a legitimate group anymore and attacking in every way that they can, saying that the data that they present are not true, while we have data supplemented with GPS coordinates and photos and videos and And the government continue to harass local patrolers. There has been two cases at least that they have arrested people. And one even instance that there is a person that fled the arrest and it's some weird situation going on in there and the main reason is that corruption, I think. Corruption that is going on and the illegal logging that is coming from government sanctioned land concessions companies adjacent to the protected area that enter in the forest and try to find the viable timber rosewoods that they later Lawn their through their concessions and traffic to Vietnam where they sell in as legitimate Felt timber in big companies. And I think that the PLCN is the one that is exposing the problem. And hence, it has been in the target of government. However, we don't, we don't will not stop. Even though PLCN is prohibited from entering the forest, we continue with satellite monitoring, we continue with monitoring the forest in the areas adjacent to the protected area. And the communities are legitimate. It's their land. They have been trained in the peaceful conflict resolution. So they are approaching always with care and the legal loggers and they have skills in order to speak for themselves and to explain the cases. Um To go over What we have learned is that Relang, yes, was was declared as a protected area also due to the petition of PLCN in May 2016. However, illegal activities still continue. And what is the most challenging as I explain is the enabling environment from from the government from local authorities and to what we have learned that it works. And it's the bottom up approaches is the the respect to the local communities. It's the respect to the ethics, the FPC to build trust with them to empower them to have them as the center of the projects and to give them the lead roles and just follow their lead and support them in any way that that you can do. In our case, what we have also to work in a technological point is to enforce simple, simple designs and a simple approaches that tackle problems of language and tackle problems of technological literacy and to try to accommodate for all age ranges and all the diversity of population. This has been the preland case and it has been really sort of the time but please feel free to come in contact with us. I will be happy to answer any questions in the end of the webinar. Thank you very much. Thank you so much and for discussing such an interesting and unique example. So I'm now going to introduce Joyce Chiluba and Grenda Masonda from the North Lluanga Conservation Programme in Zambia and Joyce is a wildlife police officer and Grenda is a village game scout. So welcome to you both. Could we start with a bit of background about how you came to be Rangers. I was saying that I'm to what I say, under the UNIT and the CINAMASP 100. And how I started it. I just started it as a game scout. My name is Grenda Masonda, a wildlife community scout. I was born in 1970 from North Lluangwa, in the United Kingdom. Yeah, I'm going to be on the graph on day nine. Brilliant. Thank you guys very much. Can you tell us any experiences about being a female ranger and any lessons that you have learned in the process? In Zambia, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife was the past and mandates monitoring of these parts and areas. And the Cihara Bezi employs the community scouts. The only difference which is there is that the wildlife police are being protected by the government. Then what great scouts are also protected by the Cihara Bezi or the community support. Then in North Lluangwa, the North Lluangwa Conservation Programme in the Department of National Parks and the Department of National Parks in the North Lluangwa ecosystem since 1986, provides training, uniforms, equipment, etc. There are many opportunities they do provide in the country. And wildlife police scouts are the great scouts in the ecosystem. They are all selected in the same way as we are selected as wildlife police scouts. It's the same way we all go under the same training process. We receive the training process annually. Or we do just the same things. The only difference is the payments. That's the only difference. The government also holds the resources and manages everything. But in conjunction with the GNDW, we have more plagues like we have units, different units in our parks in North Lluangwa National Park. We have units which also occur, like in our units, canine units. We have monitoring officers. In these two, we have female officers. And in monitoring, we also have female officers who are in now. They are becoming the first females to track the black liners in Zambia. Since that introduction of the black liners in Zambia, the groups and units have been more tidy and we are working very well. Then we are just proud of ourselves to say, as women, we are not just sitting there. We are just proud to say in Africa it's rare to find that women are also doing different things like they are supporting conservation. So we are just proud to say, okay, you can female, you can do this. A woman is not just about you waiting for a man to do anything for you. But we are just proud to say we are making our area to go up around the world. We are training not only monitoring officers and the canine officers. We also have VTT or visual tracking team as we just call it VTT. In there also we have different trainings where we may also join to track different things. Will, thank you so much for that. That was such an interesting and unique perspective. We're now going to turn to Debbie Master who is technical advisor at FFI. She works in the Karinci Seblatt National Park in Indonesia. Debbie, who initiated the community-based ranger at Karinci Seblatt National Park and when was this? We actually started working on a planning in 1999. That was myself and Grinch Seblatt National Park rangers, friends and local field assistants. I was working in the park at the time. We knew there was a problem but we wanted to do something that was going to be a really close collaboration between us all. We'd seen other projects that were working on their own, not partnering. We set up the team. The first team went active in May 2000. It's very much a partnership. You have national park rangers and community rangers. They're very much a team. It's not a command structure at the unit level. Everyone's got something to input, a lot of skill. Fantastic. In your patrol teams, you have both the community rangers and the more formal rangers from more traditional law enforcement agencies. How do they work together? Do they patrol in the teams together? What we normally aim is three community rangers, one national park ranger. The national park ranger, where possible, he's going to be the one who can, if they conduct law enforcement, then he's going to be the one who appears in court as a witness. It gives the level of protection to the community rangers as well. For investigations, that's almost entirely a community ranger because they speak local languages, most of the rangers, national park rangers do as well. But the community members of the team are able to collect information, some more sensitive information, perhaps better than the national park ranger members of the team. But we're a team and when they're patrolling, they're wearing their own uniform and it's, I mean, what we always say is it's FFI and CREACH that national park joining together to support a team that can have its own very specific priorities, not necessarily an NGO's priorities or a national park's priorities but very specific wildlife and habitat conservation priorities. Fantastic, thank you. And could you tell us whether the community rangers have been effective and how you've been measuring that? Well, first of all, they're part of the community and so they're able to get their own villages onside. A lot of them, particularly in the early days, people who were non-timber forest product collectors, so they had a huge amount of skill in that respect and amazing tracking skills which have become more and more young. You know, you walk down a trail and they'll see signs of a person and after that they can even work out roughly who they are and where they've come from. Just by the way they've made a camp or something. When we started out, we didn't know anything. We knew what we were seeing but we didn't know how to address it and that was very much a learning process. It was driven both by national park rangers and by the community rangers. So you develop a very close team because everyone's been learning together as time has gone on. What we found was that poaching threat for tiger was far, far higher than anyone had suspected. We found that human tiger conflict could very often result in the death of the tiger but not necessarily didn't have to be a serious conflict. Just a tiger moving through farmland and that might be exploited by a poacher, for instance. It swings and roundabouts, it's bumpy on occasion, so you get spikes in poaching occurring and you can sometimes spot these developing by rumours reports of rising prices for rising black market prices. Developing information networks around forestage farmers, they become friendly with the patrol team and they'll tell the guys if they think somebody suspicious has been getting into the forest. Over the last few years, we reckon that 80-85% of SNAS we've destroyed have been on the basis of tip-offs or information passed on to the ranger team. Finally, what are some of the challenges you've experienced and what key lessons learned would you pass on to others? I think probably the first challenge we learned was to not just protect your team members to protect their informants. That was literally when we just started out. It was the first ever tiger law enforcement case and the investigator who uncovered the case introduced himself using the name of somebody, a chap had said, Go and ask Mr Smith about something and somebody got arrested and Mr Smith, the informant had quite serious threats made against him, so we've learned that you protect not only your ranger team but you also protect the villagers who help you. I guess it develops trust and they know that it's safe to talk to the guys. We've learned that we keep things very tight, very close. We don't pass information out widely unless it's going to help another landscape or unless somebody can do something about it that the teams can't do. We want to be careful. We want to be practical. We want to be able to measure results. Terribly practical, terribly simple and careful. Grill, thank you so much Debbie. I'm now going to introduce our fourth speaker Chypturara, who is project manager of the Zambizi Valley biodiversity project. So Chypturara, could you tell us a little bit about the community rangers involved in the project, including those who used to be poachers? In terms of community rangers in Zimbabwe, I'm just going to give some examples. The concept was initiated by the government of Zimbabwe through the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, of course together with local authorities when the campfire programme was initiated around 1989. So this is when also the community based natural resource management concept was introduced in the country. So when you look at the selection process in terms of how do you select a ranger and actually to come back to your question of examples of rangers have been poachers. Actually these are people that have been living in the areas close to national parks and most of the time they are also involved in the utilization of the resource illegally. So in terms of the selection process, these are the people that we've got examples of rangers who have been selected, who used to be utilizing the resource illegally, so you would call them poachers. But some of these have been trained, they are good in terms of tracking animals, actually in their previous life as poachers, but now they are quite useful in tracking poachers because they are used to living in the area, they know the area very well, they know how to track. So tracking is tracking, so they've been tracking animals, now they can be used to track poachers. When you look at the rangers that we have, some of them are volunteers from what we call the ESCs, the environmental subcommittees, while others are employed by the local authorities and some are employed by safar operators in the area. We've got the concept where in the country safar operators work with the local authority that is the Royal District Council in terms of patrols, especially in areas in protected areas that we classify as safari areas. In terms of incentives, the rangers they receive training, uniforms, other equipment used in patrols, they also get experience. If they are volunteers it means they are now ready to be employed by safar operators and the RADCs and this happens quite often. When the recruitment process started, normally people that have been volunteers are taken first. Thanks so much Chip. How effective do you think this approach has been and do you have any lessons you would pass on to others trying to implement something similar? For us, community rangers are quite effective because they can patrol outside the buffer zones and they know the areas very well. From our experience, they are quite effective as they carry out extended patrols most of the time. Of course, they need more resources to do that. In terms of the evidence to support that, normally our rangers, they produce monthly reports that are submitted through the Royal District Councils. We have got information on the number of places that are in the field in terms of patrols, number of areas, the cover is made, and also we collect all this information on a monthly basis, especially in our project. This feeds to the Head Office of Departments and Wildlife Management Authority. All this information is collected. Fantastic. Thank you so much Chip. So I'm now going to introduce our final speaker, Mr Suprianto, who is Head of Bogani Nani Waterbony National Park in Indonesia. And he will be joined by Mr Akhmed Prabadi, who is National Project Manager of the CIWT project. Selamat malam. Saya Suprianto dari Taman National Bogani Nani Waterbony. Saya maen nhw'n maaf, saya memakai bahasa Indonesia, karena bahasa Inggris saya kurang bagus. Taman National Bogani Nani Waterbony biasanya kita ada masarakat mitra polhut yang laki-laki. Dan kami mencobag untuk melibatkan perempuan sebagai model pargemana mereka agar bisa berkontribusi dalam penglolaen Taman National. Ide ini kami sampaikan kepada Cymynterian KLHK melalwy direktorat Kakum dan difasilitasi o le proiect CIWT, pemiayaannya. Lalu kita latih dan kita bentw PIMP pada bulan Oktober 2020. Dan hanyel 15 orang yang proses seleksiyna, kita sampaikan kepada teman-teman di tingkat resort dan sexy wilaya, o'r plan ond te真 sonic nifrew sy i ddefnydd a chlynyd meddwl, ac i weld yмmyn gravy ped year South 한국 dwi Maryamonn, ac felly pwwysig pwysig yn creun o un nifrew ac y pwysig crywr. Wedi gen i, lud iddyn dod yn sadydd pobeddibnosig latih ichcifio. chi'n maen nhw'n meddwl o pobl, o'r hwn, o'r hwn o'r honedd, o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn o'r hwn. Ie 들chuniad Findwad rywm ddyn nhw'n maen nhw'n cechufol, ddyn nhw'n mosfoliwyr adyrwyr, i'r llyfrindod yw'r Endorod yr Edithesol Ddewyr, yr Yw Iedwch Yw Yw Yw. materi lain ter cael gyda'r pernchanaan a'r sefydliadau. Yna, setelahe, gael am ghegiatan, pelatiad a'r pembentwg, yna di fasilitasiol eich proiect CINWT yng Nghymru sy'n gweithio'r seragam ac mae'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Setelahe itul, beserta BIMP kembali ke'r resut masing masing yw'n meddwl mewn ddylch yn gweithio'r gweithio'r gwerthau'r gweithio'r gweithio'r ddylch yn gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Di tawn 2020, mae'n ddweud ymwneud o'r ffolwntir, am yndw i'n ddweud o fynd i'ch gweithio'r cyfnod, a'i'n ddweud o s levers fynd i'u gyda unrhyw sauce o'r llai'r cyfrifiadau'r amser i mi yw'r hanfodol i'w hollu Gawbl yn ymgylchedd Cymru gan gan cyfnod o'r panhau honno o'r sgwmol a chyfrin fyddion cynnau i ffordd gyda ar gyfer i gwylinn ar wahanol agoedd. So Holly, over to you. Thanks very much Liv and good afternoon, good morning, good evening to all on the on the webinar with us. I'd like to ask if the three panellists could please turn their cameras on now while we go through the introductions and also, I like to make the offer to everyone on the webinar to please feel free to place questions in the chat as we go along. We're going to try and pick up as many as possible towards the end of our session. So let me introduce our three speakers. The first speaker is Simpson Curigog. Simpson is a native son of Dumberland in northwest Namibia. He began his career at Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia in 1991, and I can say I've known him for a very long time in doing that. Simpson has had an amazing career going all the way from beginning as a tracker, becoming the director of research, then the director of field operations, and then became the chief executive officer in 2014. Simpson also co-founded Namibia's Conservancy Rhino Ranger Incentive Program, and he is currently an active member of IUCN's African Rhino Specialist Group. So Simpson, welcome. Our next panelist is Rohit Singh. Rohit is the director of Wildlife Enforcement and Zero Poaching for WWF. Rohit began his career almost two decades ago and has had incredible experience in tackling wildlife crime. He actually started his career as a zookeeper at the Bear Rescue Centre in India before joining up with all of us working on tackling wildlife crime. Rohit now plays a pivotal role in pushing for governments to adopt wildlife crime prevention approaches. He's super active. He's also Asia's representative in the International Ranger Federation and has been the lead on the largest ever survey of rangers across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and he'll be talking a bit about this, I hope. It's an amazing, amazing survey. Our last speaker on the panel is Dan Bucknell. Dan is the Executive Director of Tach Trust, and he's worked in conservation for over 20 years in Africa and Asia, and Dan has worked primarily with gorillas and Asian elephants, but also more broadly than that. So let me welcome all three of our speakers. What we're going to do is work through a round of questions starting with Simpson, and then I'll move on through the panel. So Simpson, again welcome. Simpson, we all know that you've been working with community rangers for a very, very long time, having of course started out as one yourself. But can you explain a little bit about lessons that you've learned over all that time in terms of key challenges that have been involved and what you've found has truly built the amazing community commitment that you have there now. Over to you Simpson. Thank you for this opportunity and welcome everybody to this webinar. Yeah, as Holly correctly said, I've been working for quite a long time with the communities and what I've learned in the beginning was it's in the blood of our forefathers. They have been conservationists all the year and it's where the training comes from, that it comes to us. People in the past actually poached for me, not for the local one or whatever, just for me food, that was it. And when we start, when the poaching actually start, that's where we actually, that was already in conservation and the CBRN programme when it starts with Namibia. People actually, the community's got the ownership of wildlife. They have been working with wildlife, but it was not theirs. But now it's theirs. And because of this ownership, people feel that they have to really protect this wildlife because they benefit from them. Especially when it comes to community game gods. It's not the government that employ community game gods. It's the traditional leaders that appoint them and say you are the people that has to look after our wildlife so that we can benefit from it. And while this community game god project was running, we actually, when the government gives the rights to the people for rhinos and stuff like that, we said, okay, now we want people that we call rhino rangers that we will train and that will be responsible for looking after the rhinos for the communities. And these people actually are the ones that are standing in front of us. A rhino to be a ranger is not an easy task. It's very hard. But what happened in our north-western region in Namibia is, it's a small area. We've got lots of wildlife. People know each other very well. So my son and my neighbour's son will go together to either approach or to look after the wildlife. And if something wrong happened, one of them will tell us what happened. And that's how the intelligence also has started now within the communities. And today, I can guarantee you, I will sit in my office and my phone will ring. And it's an old lady sitting in the village that's phoning me and wants to tell me that they have seen a vehicle that's not from their area. So intelligence start right in the villages from our people. The people know what they're doing. They know actually. Okay. Thanks, Simpson. That is really good. And actually a wonderful lead-in to my next question, which is to Rohit. Rohit, kind of a complicated question. But Simpson is now touched on it. And Debbie also spoke about this a bit. You've worked as a ranger and worked on ranger welfare issues for such a long time. And in the survey that you did of rangers, have you heard about any problems that were associated with local community members becoming involved in informing on sometimes their friends and their family and therefore in some ways potentially putting themselves at risk? And if you have heard about that, how have you felt it's best to deal with it? So who do you think has the responsibility to safeguard community rangers from retribution if they're being perceived to actually be monitoring and reporting on the activities of their own community? Thanks, Holly. First of all, thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak here. Before I answer your question, let me just give some sort of a context to this problem. First of all, I think we need to acknowledge it's a very complex relationship, rangers and community. We have to protect biodiversity. We have to protect ecosystem services. At the same time, we also have to protect the rights of indigenous people and local community. We also need to understand that rangers do not operate in an ideal situation. There is a context and some of that was, you know, touched upon by my friend from Cambodia because I lived in Cambodia for seven years. So I know exactly what he's talking about. Corruption. Indonesia talked about it, you know, the activities happening inside the park. So let's keep that context in mind. Now coming specifically to the survey, as you said in the introduction, that it was the largest ever survey done on rangers. It was unfortunate that we couldn't sort of do the same survey for communities. If you could ask communities, what do you feel about rangers that would have been great? But, you know, there are limitations. We did not have any specific question on sharing sensitive information, but we did ask a few questions that are sort of give us good insight to this topic. So more than 80% rangers said they can't deliver their duties without the support of rangers. But 37% of those rangers also said communities consider us as enemies. And we have recently done an analysis, which is really interesting, Holly, and I was shocked when we did this analysis, though it's just from one country. We compared the welfare conditions of rangers with the stress. And I always thought the stress comes, oh, I'm not able to see my families, or I don't have clean drinking water. You know, the maximum stress comes from negative relationship with community. And now I can think of it. If you are living in a remote location surrounded by the villagers who don't necessarily like you, you are living under constant fear and stress. So what this all shows, it's a complex relationship, and it needs to be dealt accordingly. Now coming specifically to your question with regard to information, I think if you look at, and it's probably Simpson can connect with me on this, that for the last several decades, I would say this notion of communities are eyes and ears. That organically sort of gives the impression that communities are only source of information. And I think we have to move away from it. Communities are not just source of information. They are partner in conservation. If you do not bring them as a partner, you will not be able to address the fundamental problem which they also touched upon is the trust deficit between rangers and communities. Information can be a byproduct of that good trust between rangers and communities. And in our survey, we found out that that's the major problem. There is a trust deficit between rangers and communities. Rangers don't trust communities. Communities don't trust rangers. So we really need to work on the trust. And once we work on the trust, then we can safeguard the communities. Then we can safeguard the ranger rights because when we talk about rights, we have to talk about rights of both parties and making it safe for both. And I think that's where we need to move. And one of the initiatives that is going on currently or that's going to start soon and hopefully you and Dillis will be part of that. And you have agreed, we need to understand this complex relationship. We really don't understand this. There has been a lot of work on rangers. There has been a lot of work on communities. But there has not been really good cross pollination on how these two things work together. So we can understand this better through universal ranger support alliance, which is a global alliance which was established last year. Then we can really address some of these issues of how do you strengthen the trust and then intelligence or sensitive information can be a by-product of that. Let's not start with eyes and ears. I think that it's time to move away from that. Thanks Rohit. I saw Simpson doing a lot of nodding. So I know that what you're talking about there is so fundamental and so much what we've been all trying to see and respect, which is that these are about relationships. It's not about somebody's just their job. It's about the relationships and the building of relationships. And like any relationships we have, you don't just get given trust because somebody tells you you're a law enforcement officer, you should be trusted. You don't just get given trust because you're an elderly person in a village. You build trust. So I know a lot of questions are going to be coming up around this and I want to move through and we're going to come back around to follow up on some of these things with a bit more depth. I want to go to Dan because what I want to sew our whole picture together so that we really understand a bit about how have people been rewarded and is that an important part of what happens? Or do people have other motivations? So Dan, just to come to you, as an organization, I think people know your awards quite well. You give that annual Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award, which so many of us feel is just so incredibly important. What kinds of things do you look for when you're deciding that? What kind of criteria do you use and is it an important thing in terms of sort of what we've been hearing from our other two colleagues? What does it really take to make a person one of these rangers? And how do we acknowledge that? Over to you, Dan. Thank you very much, Holly, and thank you very much for inviting me to be part of this webinar. So yes, the Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award is one of the three awards now in the annual Tusk Conservation Award. It was added in 2015. The awards themselves were created in 2013, but it was added five years ago, very much to give recognition to the vital role that rangers are playing on the ground in conservation, to give them the recognition that they deserve. The Tusk Conservation Awards are very much about giving recognition to people who sacrifice so much in the name of conservation. Because what we have found over the years is that rangers are generally and widely undervalued, undervalued by their national governments, undervalued in their local communities. It's a tough job, often taking rangers community scouts away from their families for extended periods of time, putting them in great danger. I mean, we've often heard the statistics of however many rangers are killed on the frontline serving duty as many as 100 per year. The Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award is all about delivering greater recognition and value for that, so that these people do come to be recognised by their host government, by the communities. Most importantly, that being a ranger or community scout is a very respected profession. That's what we're trying to counter in many parts of Africa. So, as Tusk, our focus is just on Africa, so the Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award is just for rangers in Africa. I mean, it's not just for rangers, it's for community scouts. People work here in areas of intelligence gathering. It can be for wildlife department scouts. It can even be for work in monitoring research. It doesn't extend to private security companies, so it is all community or government-led forces. But, yeah, they must be an active ranger and a citizen of an African country to be eligible, and they must have worked for more than 10 years in the field. And it is particularly for an individual. And we like to focus on the individual so that they can provide that sort of inspirational role model for their wider community. And so the criteria that the judging panel looked for is that level of sort of respect within their teams, among their colleagues, the extent to which they have carved their career, grown up through the ranks, come from the grassroots, and work through the ranks to get into a position where they can inspire others. Obviously looking at their track record in terms of the extent to which they have influenced policy, whether it's for range of welfare, wildlife protection, wildlife management measures, and so on. Looking at their record in protecting and safeguarding human rights as well, which is, of course, very important dimension on all of this. The level of mentorship that they provide for new recruits, the extent to which they are a role model, and so on. So there's a variety of criteria that the judging panel looked for. And we've seen some very strong, high-caliber winners of the award in recent years, over the past five years, that the award has been given. Well, thanks very much, Dan. And I think thanks also for providing quite a nice segue because I want to come back to Simpson. Dan, you guys are giving these awards to people at the pinnacle of their career, right? These are the ones that are recognized in Africa right now, people that have had a career, but they all started somewhere. And Simpson is a wonderful person to talk with us about this because you also touched a little bit, Dan, on the fact that what is required of a community ranger is a vast number of skills now, right? It's as simple as you go out there and patrol all over the place. You've got human rights issues, you have many issues. So I just want to go to Simpson and ask you, Simpson, what kind of training have you felt is really necessary? And what's involved in that, particularly how do you avoid some of these problems that have been made public about rangers that sometimes overstep their remit and sometimes push a bit too far with the community? You know, we know in many places that one of the issues where rangers are, in fact, armed, sometimes men and arms can be very problematic for local communities. So do you have safeguards in place for people that maybe don't know those bounds? So give us a little bit about the background training that you think is important and how do we really work to keep people within, you know, the proper human rights frameworks? Over to you, Simpson. Yn hollun. First of all, as Rohit said, the trust, develop the trust within the community, I would say it really came back, coming out from the community. The speck is always there. It's just now that they have to go one step ahead and have been pushed one step ahead by the elders to stand up for them looking after the wildlife that they have been given by the government. Because the ownership is now with the people, with the communities here in Namibia, which is a very good example and a very good thing that happened. The communities own the wildlife. They know it's theirs. They send their sons out to go and look after them the same like they cannot. And these sons have been teach at home. The elder is the elder. Respect must always be there. If someone did something wrong to the elders, that's the other thing. And that's where it comes, that we don't really get all the stories of rancers of people, and as Holly also correctly mentioned, it's just about people with uniforms. And when somebody is having a firearm and wearing a uniform like a binoculus, they will be carrying a camera, they will be carrying a GPS, and a smart device and that's it. And those tools, they use for monitoring the wildlife and not for any building up people or shooting equipment that they use for information. And also when we do the skills transfer ydych chi'n debryd, yn rhan o'n meddwl, yn moddol rhain, ac yn edrych i meddwl i ddweudio a'r tyw. Felly, â hynny yn ymwneud ar gyfer mynd i ddweudio, â hynny yn ei meddwl i ddweudio. Ond yn ddweudio, rydyn ni'n meddwl i ddweudio. Mae'n ddweudio â hynny yn meddwl, a'r ddweudio i ddweudio. Ond mae'r ddweudio a ddweudio a ddweudio o'r ddweudio yn yw gweithio. ac hwnnw, wrth gwrs, yn dwi wneud llawer i fynd i gilydd y dyfodol i'r amser. Ie, rwyf i. Roedd am rwyda i fynd. Gweithio yn dŵr i'r wych, yn ystyried o'r ffordd yn fud fradnau, sydd y cwmwys ydyn ni'n ffordd yn ystyried ychydig sydd yn y bydd y cy�ihau amddangos o'r amgylchedd ar gyfer gywechau o'r cyfwysgcher yma, ac oherwydd y cyfwysig y cwmwysig erioed yn cyfodol gwnaethol. yng Nghymru i'r ffordd i'r ddiweddau o'r ddechrau, a o'r dduodach o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud yng nghymru. A dyna'n amddangos i ddweud o'r ddweud, ond, fel rhai, mae'n mynd i gael bod ein bodnda i'r ddweud yw ymmddiadau o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, ond mae yna'n dweud o'r ddweud. Ond, iddweb i Roheat i rhai i ddim yn dweud o Roheat i ddim yn ystod y dyfodol ..on cyfbrydog yn ymddangos i'r rôl dioled rôl ynchwaith. Mae yna bod yn ymddangos i'r rôl ynchwaith. Er y dyfodol yn ymddangos, y cyfbrydog yn ymdweithio... ..y'r cyfbrydog yn ymdweithio a'r cyfbrydog yn ymdweithio... ..y'r cyfbrydog yn ymdweithio ymdweithio, yw gynhyrch sy'n gallu bod ymdweithio... ..ynd ysgol fawr. Yes, thanks. I think first sort of there is a sort of a misconception when we say rangers. They are only state actors, which is wrong. When you say rangers we are talking about community rangers lot of IPLC rangers. In our own survey, the 7,000 rangers we interviewed 34% were from the nearby villages. So they are the sort of local community representatives. And I think we have to just like we had representatives from Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. There are not enough government rangers. So you have to have community rangers on the ground. But and then it definitely helps bringing the community rangers because it's one of the sort of way to strengthen the relationship or build the trust between rangers and communities. But again, I would like to just talk about, you know, the broader enabling conditions and I can give example when we are and I'm referring back to my survey. You know, having female ranger is one thing, but if you do not have the enabling conditions to retain the female rangers, it's not going to work. It goes same with local communities. If you do not have the enabling conditions, if there is discrimination happening within the patrol teams, if IPLC ranger is only used as a porter or is only used to cook food. You know, and that sort of thing that discrimination happening or there is a discrimination happening in terms of, you know, the facilities that are being provided to them or they are their life is at risk when they are not the law enforcement. They are facing the equal threat. What the state rangers are facing. So I think enabling conditions are equally important when we talk about bringing community rangers. It does definitely help. And finally, I think let's keep one thing in mind. By 2030, if we want to protect 30% of the planet, whether it's protected or conserved. I can't disclose the number, but we have just completed the census. Just to give you the number, there are more hairdressers in the UK than rangers in the world. So it's not a choice. It's an imperative that we have to engage communities. No government is going to recruit millions and millions of rangers overnight. It's not just about boots on the ground. It's also about flip flops on the ground. We have to have some sort of mechanism monitoring mechanism on the place and we have to engage communities in doing that. Thanks, Rohit. I always love your incredible energy. And I think that, you know, what we're all feeling here is just that incredible importance coming on through, which is that without communities, what will happen with the CBD targets, you know, the post 2020, they won't happen. So I think governments are increasingly definitely recognizing that these partnerships are no longer something that you just see as a specialized area, but something that is absolutely mandatory basically going forward. So thanks for that. I'm going to come back, Dan, with one last question to you. And then I see that we're getting a lot of nice questions onto the chat that Dillison and live will pick up on. So let me just come back to you quickly, Dan. In addition to giving the wonderful awards that Tusk gives, you also support a number of projects and programs that I'm aware of. Listening to the conversation that we've been having here, do you have a few key lessons that you think you've learned through these programs and projects about what's worked and what hasn't? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, picking up on a theme that's been mentioned throughout is that obviously community engagement is really key here. And, you know, picking up on Rohit's point about the sort of the pre conditions, the enabling conditions for community scouts to work effectively. I think what we've seen is that for community scouts and that approach to be most effective, it has to be embedded within a much wider, more comprehensive sort of conservation strategy with wider community benefits. I think the projects that we tend to support across Africa are those that combine law enforcement with community support and community scouts can often be the bridge between the law enforcement and the local community. I think where we've seen illegal wildlife trade being tackled most effectively, it's where you've got that strong community buy-in, the community is really sort of acting almost like that extra sort of buffer zone to protected areas. So I think that that is absolutely key. Picking up on Simpson's point about training, training also is essential. You know, you're putting rangers, community scouts into potentially very perilous situations, so they have to have robust and rigorous training and we've seen that that can be game changing. We've picked up on the theme in the discussion about human rights. Human rights is an important element in the training of community scouts and rangers these days. It was a very important precondition in a big event we did last year called the Wildlife Ranger Challenge, which supported over 100 protected areas across Africa at a time when they really needed extra resources to come through the sort of the funding deficit caused by COVID. So, yes, human rights was very important there and we facilitated a number of briefings on that. But also what we've seen, you know, as I mean Simpson mentioned about sort of scene of crime procedure and all of this to facilitate arrests and ensure that, you know, we see the prosecutions for wildlife crime. What we've also seen is really important to train people who are going into these sort of potentially perilous situations in how to, you know, how to successfully apprehend poachers, how to tackle illegal wildlife activity at the right sort of and the most appropriate level with the most appropriate force and ultimately to, you know, to observe correct arrest procedure. For example, you know, how to avoid a potential ambush from poachers, that sort of thing. I mean, I think, you know, many rangers have lost their lives on the front line and, you know, possibly some could be avoided if they'd been able to observe correct, correct arrest procedure. So training is vital. The last thing I'd sort of go on to say is, and this is linked back to the sort of the first point about sort of community engagement. It's the very key message that rangers aren't, of course, all about, you know, stopping poaching and countering illegal activity. They do so much more besides the, you know, whether rangers or community scouts. They can be this bridge between the community and the law enforcement. Many rangers and community scouts are engaged in human wildlife conflict mitigation, for example. I don't think that's come up yet as a key element of their role and I know that, you know, IID did some very important research showing that where people suffer the consequences of human wildlife conflict, that this can in fact be a key driver for wildlife crime. And so community scouts rangers have a key role in helping prevent that too. And that's an extra and very important dimension to community support. So much besides, I'm sure, I'm sure more will come out. Well, thanks Dan. Those are some wonderful examples. And I think what, you know, I feel as I hand over the panel in just a moment to Dillus and live, I really feel that, you know, our interest from IID and Suleyside has really been to highlight the absolutely indisputable critical role of communities in combating illegal wildlife trade. And whether there are more or less of them than hairdressers, what we know is we need more of them. And that's not to say that we don't need more hairdressers, even if no one can get to them during the COVID. So I want to take the opportunity to thank so much, the three of you. You're all stars and you've all done amazing work in your own right. I'm going to turn over to Dillus and live because we've had some fabulous questions coming up for both the previous speakers, as well as you. So please all hang on there and over to you live and Dillus. Thanks panel. Great. Thanks so much Holly for that. And thank you all to our excellent panelists as well. So quite a few of the questions were targeted around challenges of being a female ranger and sort of societal pressures that might come with that. So I know we have some of the community forest women rangers from the Indonesia programme online, and I wondered if they would like to share a little bit about their experiences of being a female ranger. Hello. Hello. Hello. This is a women's best community forest ranger in Moghani Naniwata Bwne National Fraff from Indonesia. Become a ranger since the 2020 it's a big deal and a great opportunity for all of us. That's doing more to protect our art at the point. The interesting experience of being a ranger was when we did the planning for the first time and it was a voluntary activity. From there we learned that from the art we can even do anything as long story start. What are our challenges from the preparation and the logging accounts or poachers? Actually, we have our own problem here, such as eating traditions. How old society in North Zealand animals are trying to be protected. Some people are trying to protect them, some people are trying to. Thank you very much. The same question to if Joyce and Grenda are still online. Do you have any particular challenges that you faced being a female ranger as part of the North Rwanga conservation programme? Yes. I'm just from the trap trailers and illegal logging account or poachers. Actually, like what I say, we had our own problem here, such as eating traditions. Because half of sitting to me protect a maleo, even the anua. So we can say this like we're trying to protect them, but some people trying to either make our own problem here. That's challenges for us, all of us. Brilliant. Thank you. Maybe we'll move on to a question for our panellists then from Dillis. A couple of really interesting questions that have come up for the panel, but quite a few of which have been answered over the course of the panel discussion. So one around whether community ranges can ever replace traditional ranges. And I guess just based on Rohit's comment about how few ranges there are in total, the answer to that is actually we need both of them, not either or. So that's questions about how to keep ranges motivated and I think Simpson talked nicely to that, but one that I think is really interesting. Actually, two that have come up towards the end that I think are very interesting. One is around. Are there any kind of advantages and disadvantages to the different types of community ranges given that there's such a wide spectrum of them from monitors to scouts to sort of fully armed for ranges. And is there sort of any existing kind of analysis of the advantages and disadvantages associated with those different types of ranges. And then a second one is about whether there are any safeguards existing safeguards for community ranges who's responsible for them if things go wrong. So maybe I can just pose those two questions to the three panellists and either answer one or both of those if you have perspectives on those. Rohit, perhaps we can go to you first on the kind of issues, opportunities and challenges associated with different types and whether there has been any analysis done of that and then also on the safeguards issue. Thanks, Dyllis. And then I think it's really interesting question. I'm not aware of any specific analysis that look into, you know, what are the advantages and disadvantages. I guess it's very context specific. If you look at the region where I have spent 15 years of my career Southeast Asia, majority of the community ranges do not carry firearms. Has it been very effective or not? It's hard to say in some countries like in Indonesia, it has made some difference. In some countries it has not made much difference and we are losing wildlife species, and it is again because of the broader context. So I think there has not been any study and maybe this is, I want to invite people on this call, we have this data. We interviewed 7000 rangers and each ranger was asked 194 questions. So please help us to analyse it and this will help us to understand. Maybe we can filter some information of the rangers who came from the nearby villages. Do they have different perception about authorities? So it can be an interesting analysis. The second question, and I think that's a very important question, and I think anybody who is supporting local communities for going out on patrol, I think it's must that we make sure that they have the right training. They have the right equipment and they have all the safety measures in place before we send them out on patrol. They may not be enforcing the law, but they are facing the same threat which state rangers are facing because our own survey says that 80% rangers have faced life threatening situations. So the risk is out there. So I think it is really important that we start addressing those issues before we send community rangers out. And I think there has been a lot of capacity building, a lot of training materials and standards, but a lot of that material has been focused on state rangers. And I think that's where we need to now move towards developing similar standards or similar training material for IPLC rangers. Thanks Rohit. And Dan and Simpson, do you have any thoughts on these, particularly on the issue of around safeguards? I mean both of you work for organisations that either fund or directly employ rangers. Do you have any thoughts as to, from a safeguarding perspective, who's responsible for those rangers if something goes wrong? Yeah, I mean, from our perspective it's obviously whoever's employing them. Most of our funding or all our funding goes to local NGOs and so any support to community scouts and rangers is through them. And so the onus is on them to put in place the right safeguarding measures. And that is something that we look at, but I think as Rohit says more needs doing in this area. I mean I think more needs doing for government rangers too in terms of standard operating procedures. I don't think there is one sort of common standard operating procedure manual that people can follow. There is work underway, the likes of African parks have been developing theirs over the years and various others have their various sort of manuals that they're developing and putting in place. And we need to extend that to community guards as well. I'd also agree with Rohit in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of community scouts and rangers. I was talking earlier I was sort of in a way of using the terms interchangeably. And of course there is a key difference and you know, obviously where where where Simpson works you know a community, what is meant by community scout is very different to the scenario in Kenya where you know community rangers, conservancy rangers are much like you know state authority rangers. So it depends on the sort of the mandate that they are, they are given. It depends on the context in which they work. It also I think really depends on the level of threat that they're trying to tackle. I mean what hasn't come up in any of this discussion yet, but which has been a big issue linked to obviously the human rights issue is a lot of the sort of the negative press international press that ranges have been been getting and the concern that has been expressed about the sort of the over militarization of ranges and human rights abuses and such like so I think that's something that needs to be born in mind and where you can, you know, where you don't have to arm rangers if you know if that's not necessary to tackle the threat then you know it's you know then one shouldn't because you know arming rangers and going down that route can also sort of create that sort of distance between them and the community so yeah it's context specific. Great. Thanks Dan and yeah that issue about getting that balance right between rangers being able to protect themselves, but also becoming part of a bigger problem is a really fine one to strike I think. Simpson, let's give you the last word if your internet is stable enough. Does any final thoughts from you or any personal experiences to share about these issues around safeguarding if something goes wrong and who's responsible for the rangers. Is SRT responsible for the rangers that it employs? Is it the conservancy? How does that work where you are? Okay. I must say that the rangers are actually employed by the conservancies. But when it comes to going out to the field, that's where we make sure that we always have a armed trained police officer. So what we do is I think Rohit or something mentioned the two rangers and something like that, but what we did is we had an armed police officer, one person or two rhino, two SRT staff who are also trained, well trained, and then we had one community game ranger that's with them. So that's the team. Just to make sure, I mean that everybody is protected by the trained guy. So there is a team leader that has to take responsibility. Okay, great. Okay, thanks very much Simpson. Just to say I'm sorry we didn't manage to get to all the questions in the Q&A. There is going to be a blog following this webinar and we'll try and pick up some more of the questions in the blog. There will also be a recording of it available. And as I said the details of the case studies are available on the People Not Poaching website. Liv shall I hand back to you just for some closing words and then we can end the webinar. Yeah, just a quick reminder before you go to follow People Not Poaching on Twitter and Facebook if you don't already. And you can also sign up to receive our newsletter on our homepage, which is peoplenotpoaching.org. And you can also find several of the examples you heard about today by heading to our explore tab on our website where you can find all of our case studies. And finally, if you are involved in or you know someone who is in a project that you think sounds relevant to the People Not Poaching platform, then we would absolutely love to hear from you. And you can either head to our website and to our contribute tab or you can email me on peoplenotpoaching.gmail.com or on my IID email address as you can see on the screen now. So lastly, I just want to thank all of our excellent speakers and panellists for being here with us today and for all your thoughtful and insightful contributions to the discussion. And I also want to thank all of the attendees for joining the webinar and for asking key questions and contributing to the discussion in the chat. We will share a link to the recorded session on our website and Twitter soon. So thank you again for joining and have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks everyone.