It’s scary to think that one day, numerous wild animals could become extinct. According to the World Economic Forum, illegal wildlife tracking, including poaching, is worth between $7 billion and $23 billion annually.
Although there are reserves with rangers working to combat poaching in Africa, they can’t keep up. Let us take Tanzania as an example; the WWF states that over the past five years, they lost over 63 percent of their elephant population, from over 90,000 elephants to less than 40,000.
The number is scary, and it keeps increasing each year. At VETPAW, we got tired of seeing these numbers rise, which is why we organized and took action to help with endangered wildlife protection in Africa. We are a group of 9/11 US veterans that travel to protective parks and communities and help local authorities combat poaching in Africa.
VETPAW Empowers Local Authorities in Africa
VETPAW is a 501c3 registered non-profit organization. Our team of U.S. Veterans empowers local authorities on the ground protecting rhinos and elephants from being killed by poachers.
One of the difficulties park rangers and local authorities have is the lack of training and tactical expertise to prevent poaching from happening. We enable them through training, so they can continue the job even when we are no longer physically with them.
Many of the lessons we teach are from what our veterans learned while fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. VETPAW trains park rangers tactically, arranges active patrols, first aid, mission planning, intelligence analysis, and other strategies, and builds ties with the local community, so together poachers can be detected before performing the act.
You Can Join The Fight
The mission of VETPAW is to preserve and protect endangered African Wildlife and, at the same time, empower veterans so their skills and experiences can help park rangers and local authorities. We get applications from U.S. veterans mainly; however, we also accept veterans from other countries.
If you are not a veteran, but you would still like to join us in this fight, you can help us through donations.