Top honour for exceptionally courageous Field Ranger, Samuel Loware
In Uganda’s Kidepo Valley National Park , Samuel Loware, has become something of a legend amid regular encounters with heavily armed guerrillas.
A 2018 article in the Guardian, provides insight, describing how countless desperate people in neighbouring Sudan take their AK47s on raids across the border, where they terrorise villagers, hunt antelopes, zebra, buffaloes and other animals for meat, or kill elephants and ostriches for Chinese ivory and bone-marrow smugglers.
Fatal encounter
The article recounts how Loware was once shot alongside a local villager while tracking a poacher trying to flee back over the border with contraband meat.
As the two pursuers approached a gully, the poacher opened fire from behind a tree. A shot passed through the chest of the villager, killing him instantly, and into the body of Loware. He had to be driven several hours to a hospital where a surgeon cut out the bullet, lodged four inches down his back.
On another mission, Loware saw his commander killed in a gun battle with Sudanese poachers. But such incidents have not deterred Loware, said Watts. Unlike Sundanese poachers – mostly teenagers who have spent their lives in war zones with no education or concept of conservation – Loware was raised to believe in wildlife protection as a necessity and an opportunity.
He continues to play a key role in human-wildlife conflict resolution, showing “even the most hostile communities the value of parks and the wildlife in them”, said Game Rangers Association of Africa chief executive, Andrew Campbell.
In declaring Loware the Best Field Ranger in Africa today, Cambell added: “Because of his effective monitoring and data collection skills, Samuel has made a significant impact on the increase of both giraffe and lion populations in the Kidepo Valley National Park. He is now conducting habitat assessments for the reintroduction of rhino into Kidepo, and other translocations of wildlife to ensure the conservation of these key species.”
Runners up in the best Field Rangers category were
- Julius Kaputo – Working in the Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia for Conservation Lower Zambezi
- Losas Lenamunyi – Working in the Sera Community Conservancy, Kenya for the Northern Rangelands Trust.
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