#akashinga

[comicwaren]

From Bring on the Bad Guys: Abomination #001

“Well of Ages”, by Phillip Kennedy Johnson (W), Sergio Dávila, Aure Jimenez and Arif Prianto (A)

“Deal with the Devil”, by Marc Guggenheim (W), Michael Sta. Maria and Dono Sánchez-Almara (A)

[city-of-ladies]

Why Zimbabwe’s female rangers are better at stopping poaching

The Akashinga, or “brave ones,” survived abuse and exploitation. Now, armed and trained like special forces, they're protecting the country’s most iconic wildlife.

“Mander sought women who had suffered trauma: AIDS orphans, victims of sexual assault or domestic abuse. Kumire joined after her husband abandoned her and their two daughters. Who better to task with protecting exploited animals, Mander reasoned, than women who had suffered from exploitation? He modeled his selection course on special forces training, subjecting the women to three days of nonstop exercises designed to test their teamwork skills while being wet, cold, hungry, and tired. Of 37 recruits who started the course, 16 were chosen for the training program; only three quit. Years ago Mander ran a similar course for 189 men. At the end of day one, all but three had quit. “We thought we were putting [the women] through hell,” Mander says. “But it turns out, they’ve already been through it.””

[intelligentliving]

Africa’s First Armed, All-Female Anti-Poaching Unit

An Australian named Damien Mander recruits females to become wildlife rangers to protect the animals in Zimbabwe’s Phundundu Wildlife Area. He has changed the lives of many African women who were previously broken, and he trains them to be fearless soldiers. They now have a purpose in life and can...

[kreuzaderny]

Petronella Chigumbura is a member of the Akashinga, or ‘brave ones’, an all-female anti-poaching unit. They patrol Zimbabwe’s Phundundu Wildlife Area in the Zambezi Valley, where elephant poaching is common.

[genoacedo]

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#Repost @alexander.dreymon (with @report.for.insta) ... @officialzsl @int.anti.poaching.foundation #akashinga #zslamerica #womenempowerment #alexanderdreymon https://www.instagram.com/p/B0zDIymoXEQ/?igshid=1hh6csbt10s7k

[keepingitneutral]

“Akashinga – the Brave Ones” © Brent Stirton, Getty Images,

Akashinga (‘The Brave Ones’) is a ranger force established as an alternative conservation model. It aims to work with, rather than against local populations, for the long-term benefits of their communities and the environment. 

Akashinga comprises women from disadvantaged backgrounds, empowering them, offering jobs, and helping local people to benefit directly from the preservation of wildlife. 

Petronella Chigumbura (30), a member of the all-female anti-poaching unit, participates in stealth and concealment training in the Phundundu Wildlife Park, Zimbabwe.

Environment, Singles, Winner / World Press Photo of the Year

[jareckiworld]

Brent Stirton  -  Petronella Chigumbura. Akashinga (the brave ones) Zimbabwe (Getty Images, 2018)

[rjzimmerman]

All-female ranger teams are an innovative and effective way to defend wildlife, says the founder of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation.

Excerpt:

Damien Mander has thought a lot about best practices for protecting wildlife.

As the Australian-born founder of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation, Mander has spent the past 10 years working on the front lines protecting rhino and other wildlife in four African nations. For most of that time his work in this dangerous arena took what he calls “a fairly military approach.” That’s not surprising considering his prior decade-long career with governmental and private military organizations.

More recently, however, he began to wonder if maybe “we’ve done it wrong all these years.”

That shift, he said recently at the 2018 Animal Rights National Conference in Los Angeles, led to the rollout of a new program from the anti-poaching organization. Launched in 2017, the Akashinga program (“The Brave Ones” in Shona) is focused on developing a new force of all-female wildlife rangers tasked with protecting rhinos, elephants and other wildlife from poachers. Akashinga has so far recruited and trained nearly three dozen women.

Mander said Akashinga is a departure from the male-centric military and special-ops world in which he has long operated — what he calls “one of the ultimate boys’ clubs” — and his newer realm of conservation rangers, where the male-to-female ratio is 100 to 1.

To build his Akashinga team Mander, who had not previously trained women, sought applicants from among the most vulnerable females in rural areas. He recruited abuse survivors, abandoned wives, orphans, sex workers and single mothers — women who, he said, “weren’t victims of circumstance; they were victims of men.” Also joining the team this past December was Vimbai Kumire, the youngest daughter of Zimbabwe’s president Emmerson Mnangagwa, reportedly as a show of her support for the women and their role in rebuilding the country.

With Akashinga, Mander isn’t giving up the hard tools in the conservationist’s toolbox. He is, however, looking at a move away from what his organization calls a “militarized paradigm of ‘fortress conservation’ which defends colonial boundaries between nature and humans.” Instead the focus is on rural communities and personal connections, working with the local population and employing locals — all women — to stop wildlife crime in areas that don’t have protection.