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Professionalizing Ranger Training institute in Bhutan
© WWF Bhutan
About the project

Professionalizing ranger training in Bhutan 

To nationalize and professionalize ranger trainings, WWF-Bhutan in collaboration with the Southern African Wildlife College, supported the Department of Forests and Park Services set up a long-term mechanism to train rangers.  

The project will transform the ranger training programs in College of Natural Resources and Ugyen Wangchuck Institute of Conservation and Environment by incorporating specific training course in their programs.  

This support has potential for multiplication by serving as an example to other tiger-range countries facing similar challenges.  

The project also considered the increasing interest among women to take up ranger trainings and how the profession can be gender sensitive. Traditionally, there has been less interest among women to join the field ranger profession in Bhutan. However, the trend is changing with increasing number of female applicants enrolled in ranger training programs.  Currently, about 10 percent of the rangers in Bhutan are women.   

Today, Bhutan’s exquisite wildlife is facing pressure from poaching and illegal logging. Rangers are the first, and often the only, line of defense between poachers and wildlife. Everyday these committed man and women run the risk of being confronted by armed loggers, poachers or even the wildlife they are working to defend. Despite these threats, rangers often have no formal training. Some may have undergone adhoc training, but there is no systematic training and associated facility to ensure that rangers are well trained for their challenging positions. The institutionalization of training would not only improve their ability to do their job, but also keep the rangers safe in the field. WWF has been supporting ranger training across the globe for decades  

Often WWF experts provide the training or in other cases, WWF finds expertise externally. It is now recognized that this is neither a sustainable approach nor an approach that promotes national ownership of competences or professionalization of a ranger force. In Bhutan, WWF has been supporting ranger trainings and despite the improvements for immediate needs, there is no sustainability since the Government transfers the trained staff to other places where wildlife crime is not a priority activity and without having a well-established ranger training institutions, WWF land up sending the rangers out of the country, which has cost implications. This project will build on previous trainings to create an improved and institutionalized training curriculum to transform the nation’s capacity building model. Together we will develop curriculum courses for ongoing development of rangers, for instance refresher courses, and, for further sustainability, the courses will include a training of trainers to ensure there is the capacity within Bhutan to conduct high quality ranger training. The Southern African Wildlife College is an excellent model of a systematic and sustainable ranger training institute (http://www.wildlifecollege.org.za). 

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Objectives

  • 1. By 2022, amended ranger training curriculum is instituted and integrated in UWICER

Project Approach

The project contributed to both the short-term and long-term impacts in professionalizing the ranger training institute in Bhutan. The ToTs participants will replicate the course to train peers in the field on conservation law enforcement. The institute will include the training into the Professional Forester Course and roll-out the five-week training program for in-service foresters.

Geographic Coverage

Bumthang District.

Partners

UWICER and Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC)

Implementing Partners

  • UWICER

  • Department of Forests and Park Services

  • Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC)