You might think that there’s not much worse than facing an armed poacher with your pants down. But there is, and that’s facing an armed poacher and not knowing what to do about it.

In Kenya the majority of wild animals exist (at least for some periods of the year) outside the protection of national parks, ranging across vast tracts of community land. This land is critical for conservation and Kenya is taking huge strides in community-driven conservation efforts, the most recent highlight being last week’s graduation of 247 community rangers after a grueling three-month paramilitary course at the Manyani Kenya Wildlife Service Training Academy.

This fantastic number included 16 of our leading Big Life community Rangers (ten of these funded with huge thanks to International Fund for Animal Welfare - IFAW, and equal thanks to the Global Environment Facility that funded the training of six rangers), and it was with great pride that we watched Big Life Ranger Sembeke receive the ''Best Leader'' award from the Director General of KWS, Mr Katili Mbathi.

Big Life recognizes the huge importance of training Rangers to prepare them for the challenges they face because, as the Director said in his speech, ''Rangers have to better trained and equipped than the poachers they will face in the field.''

We extend a huge thank you to KWS for giving our Rangers this opportunity to train at their Academy.