The Rangers Who Die for Animals

Between 2009 and 2024, at least 1,197 park rangers were killed in the line of duty worldwide, according to the Thin Green Line Foundation, an organization that tracks ranger fatalities. The deaths are distributed across the world: in the forests of the Congo Basin, in the parks of Nepal, in the game reserves of Zimbabwe, in the marine protected areas of the Philippines. The causes vary—some rangers are killed by poachers, some by armed rebel groups that use protected areas as sanctuaries, some by local communities who see conservation as a threat to their livelihoods. Many more are injured, sometimes permanently. Many more die of disease contracted in the field, of accidents in difficult terrain, of stress-related illness that accumulates over years of constant danger.

The number is almost certainly an undercount. Many ranger deaths in remote areas of Africa and Asia go unreported, unrecorded, and unremarked upon. The Thin Green Line Foundation estimates that for every ranger death that is recorded, at least two more go uncounted.

What is striking about the deaths is their randomness of geography and their consistency of cause. Park rangers in the Virunga Mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo work in an active conflict zone, facing armed militia groups, rebel armies, and poachers who are frequently one and the same. Between 2009 and 2024, at least 200 rangers have been killed in Virunga alone. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages several of the most dangerous parks in the world, has documented over 1,000 ranger deaths across its programs in the same period.

In Nepal's Chitwan National Park, rangers protecting the last greater one-horned rhinos face a different kind of threat: increasingly organized rhino poachers who cross the border from India armed with sophisticated weapons. The introduction of community-based anti-poaching units has helped, recruiting local people as rangers and creating economic incentives for conservation, but the fundamental equation has not changed: a rhino horn can be worth more than a ranger's annual salary, and the people who want that horn are willing to kill for it.

Ranger wages are, in many parts of the world, shockingly low. In sub-Saharan Africa, park rangers can earn as little as $200 per month while performing one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The equipment they are given—vehicles that break down, radios that don't work, uniforms that don't protect from the elements—is often inadequate. The training they receive is frequently insufficient. And the legal support they get when they arrest a poacher is often nonexistent.

In Indonesia, where the BOS Foundation's orangutan protection teams work alongside government forest rangers, the pressure is different but equally intense. Rangers regularly confront illegal loggers operating in the Leuser Ecosystem, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Several have been attacked with chainsaws. In 2023, a ranger named Bagus Prasetyo was killed by illegal loggers while documenting encroachment in a protected zone in northern Sumatra. He was 31 years old. He left behind a wife and a three-year-old daughter.

International donors and conservation organizations increasingly recognize the need to provide better support for rangers: better pay, better equipment, better training, and better legal backing. The Game Rangers International organization in Zambia has pioneered ranger welfare programs that include psychological support for rangers dealing with traumatic experiences. The Thin Green Line Foundation provides emergency support to families of rangers killed in the line of duty. The Lion Recovery Fund has helped establish ranger compensation programs in several African countries.

None of this is enough. The fundamental problem—demand for illegal wildlife products that makes killing animals and the people who protect them profitable—remains unsolved. Until that demand is eliminated, rangers will continue to die, and the species they protect will continue to disappear, one by one, in the dark.