Kenya on Saturday joined the rest of the world in paying tribute to rangers for their work in guarding the country’s natural heritage.
World Ranger’s Day is commemorated on July 31.
The day is celebrated worldwide to honor rangers killed or injured in the line of duty and also to acknowledge their work.
The aim is to afford the world the chance to show solidarity with rangers and empathize with them, as well as to change the attitude towards the job of a ranger by awakening in everyone the spirit of conservation.
Kenya Forest Service chief conservator Julius Kamau said they lost two rangers over the last year. Another 18 were injured in the line of duty.
“This is an improvement from the previous financial year where we lost three rangers with 21 injuries in the line of duty,” Kamau said.
KFS manages 6.4 million acres of forests and helps counties manage another 4.2 million acres.
The service says at least 988,422 acres of public forests are degraded and need to be fixed.
Kamau said it was unfortunate that some of the rangers have had to lose their lives in the line of duty.
“We pay tribute to the rangers we have unfortunately lost in the line of duty which is a very sad scenario. We also recognize the good work that the rangers are doing under very challenging circumstances,” he said.
The honourary warden said rangers were working round the clock under difficult circumstances for the benefit of the people.
“They are protecting our natural heritage which is the forests which play a critical role to the same society which sometimes face against them and injure them or even cause loss of life. It is highly disturbing.”
Kamau said he was happy with the work his troops are doing across the country.
He asked communities living adjacent to forests to be enlightened on what rangers are doing in protecting the natural resources.
“We have many critical water ecosystems as a country and forest ecosystem that serves as critical water catchment areas. Therefore, when a ranger is putting his life on the line to protect a difficult terrain, one of the coldest areas, the hottest areas, it is a divine call to protect what God wants us to protect,” Kamau said.
“We want to encourage the communities living adjacent to forests to complement the efforts of rangers and secure the resources for our good and the future of this country.”
Kamau said the welfare of rangers was continually being improved.
It includes housing, medical cover, their mobility, uniform, and equipment among others.
“We have also deployed technology which makes sure that even though we do not have enough numbers to cover what we would wish to cover, we have a multiplier effect.”
Kamau said technology has also been adopted by the service to make work easier.
He said KFS is engaging the government to hire more rangers.
“As we speak today, every ranger is taking care of about 1,000 hectares and yet internationally, a ranger should be taking care of about 400 hectares. They are therefore working more than twice the work they should be doing,” he said.
Kamau said KFS is set to employ another 2,550 rangers to ease the workload.