Home to the largest intact, and most significant terrestrial biodiversity in Timor-Leste, Nino Konis Santana National Park is the only national park in one of the world's youngest nations. All funds raised by the Tasmanian Ranger Relay will go to the rangers working there.
The Country Director of Conservation International for Timor-Leste, Manual Mendes, explains the current situation:
"For government rangers proper equipment is important for their personal safety, to their morale, and for their ability to undertake overnight patrols, traverse the park, respond to calls and to work as a group."
"Nino Konis Santana National Park is a remote and sometimes lonely place to live and work. The communities and rangers living here in the park can be forgotten, yet they are defending their country’s primary reserve of terrestrial wildlife, forest and a bastion of marine biodiversity. They do so with next to no support. The Forest Guards last had new motorbikes in 2010, which were cheap and lasted 3-4 years before being irreparable. Since then, they have used their personal bikes for work with no recompense. They have been promised new uniforms this year, but have been issued no other equipment whatsoever."
Albino Perreira, a ranger in the National Park, has sent us this video of the need for more equipment.
Nino Konis Santana National Park has seven rangers who oversee the entire park.
The daily obstacles we face brings difficulties in controlling the park.
Plus right now, all guards’ motorbikes are [irreparably] broken.
Through this opportunity we would like to request to support us, especially with motorbikes so we can implement our routine and daily activities and patrol more effectively.
Thank You!
Manuel Mendes from Conservation International sees the opportunity to provide equipment as part of a broader project of upskilling the workforce in the national park.
"The project seeks to achieve an integrated, motivated and capable team of community and government rangers for NKSNP, thereby starting to provide a model of the ranger profession and of national park protection for the rest of the country as Timor-Leste works to operationalise more of its protected area network. We want these rangers – both the government Coastal and Forest Guards and the CCG members – to be inspirational. We want them to inspire government to support them more. To interact with them, to listen to them, to find the resources to equip and sustain them. Then, in turn, government will receive a better protected national park which really shows the value of conservation. A place where local communities are sustained by properly managed natural resources and where all users of the park respect both the rangers and the assets they guard. This, we hope, will encourage the government and Timor-Leste’s development partners to invest more in other protected areas in the country – before it is too late and their natural integrity and the ecosystem services they provide to the Timorese are lost. We also want the rangers to inspire other Timorese citizens – to become rangers and to become GOOD rangers – and to establish or become a members of local Community Conservation Groups. We want the success and the pride of the NKSNP rangers to show others in the country that being a ranger – community or government, voluntary or paid – is a noble endeavour of community service which not only upholds the animist roots of the country’s culture, but is helping pave a green, sustainable and proper pathway to development for Timor-Leste; ultimately providing its children a land in which they can not only survive, but build economic futures for themselves."
The principle non-government organisation working with protected area management in Timor-Leste, and our partner in the Ranger Relay, Conservation International is focused on improving environmental outcomes in Timor-Leste: find out more.
Photos courtesy of Conservation International.
