National Geographic USA – June 2019

She stares at the image as the truck she’s rid-

ing in bounces over the rutted road. The cat’s

neck is slashed and its bloody paws hang slack.

“Before this job, I didn’t think about the ani-

mals,” she says.

Now Kumire, 33, and her all-female wildlife

ranger team, the Akashinga, are among the ani-

mals’ fiercest protectors. The rangers are an arm

of the nonprofit International Anti-Poaching

Foundation, which manages Zimbabwe’s Phund-

undu Wildlife Area, a 115-square-mile former

trophy hunting tract in the Zambezi Valley eco-

system. The greater region has lost thousands of

Mander, a former

Australian special forces

soldier who has trained

game rangers in Africa

for more than a decade,

leads the women

through hand-to-hand

combat exercises. After

years of training male

rangers, Mander con-

cluded that women

are often better suited

for the job. He says

they’re more adept at

de-escalating violent

situations and less sus-

ceptible to bribery.

30

30

0 mi

0 km

ZAMBIA

ZIMBABWE

PHUNDUNDU

WILDLIFE

AREA

MANA POOLS

NATIONAL PARK

MATUSADONA

NATIONAL PARK

AKASHINGA

BASE

Kaf

ue Zam

bez

i^

L

ak

e^

K

ariba

AREA

ENLARGED

AFRICA

ZIMBABWE

KATIE ARMSTRONG, NGM STAFF
SOURCE: INTERNATIONAL ANTI-POACHING FOUNDATION

Sgt. Vimbai

Kumire holds

up a photo of

a dead leopard

on her phone.

WILDLIFE WATCH

The nonprofit National

Geographic Society

helped fund this story.

To read more reporting

about wildlife crime, visit

natgeo.com/wildlife-watch.