The Black Mambas: An All-Female Ranger Unit Guarding Greater Kruger

Founded in 2013 by Transfrontier Africa, the Black Mambas are the world's first majority-female anti-poaching unit, drawing rangers from villages bordering the 52,000-hectare Balule Nature Reserve inside Greater Kruger. Unarmed rangers walk boundary and bush patrols, pull snares, and run the Bush Babies environmental education programme for local schoolchildren. The unit has removed more than 3,000 snares and walked over 30,000 kilometres of patrols while creating more than 100 local jobs. Their approach earned the UN's Champions of the Earth award in 2015 and has been credited with sharply reducing poaching incursions on the reserves they guard.