This interview was established thanks to the collaboration of a very young ranger working in South Africa as a antipoaching ranger: Jethro Dell.
This interview was established thanks to the collaboration of a very young ranger working in South Africa as a anti-poaching. We have been talking with Jethro Dell to know something more about his great effort in the anti-poaching sector.
We started by posing some questions about Jethro’s background and history since the experience of a man can in some way determine the origin of his passion. Today Jethro is working in a private reserve in South Africa, the name and location of the area is disclosed material.
- About your background:
Born in 1996, Jethro started to gain a deep interest for wildlife, conservation and related matters since his very early years. His father’s job, a field ecologist, has deeply influenced the choices of his future lifestyle and profession since Jethro followed the parent during the numerous field duties that concerned his work. An entire life by the bush, dedication to training and wildlife knowledge are the words to summarize Jethro’s life up to now. In the following lines you will read the answers of one of the most the most promising resources against poaching we can find.
My parent always told me that if you have to do something in life, you have to do something you love and this is what I did.
- When did you start this job and why did you chose it?
In some way the job chose me, when you grow up in the bush and you deeply love and respect nature this is the job for you. This is what happened to me.
I was always very keen on learning to protect nature and year after year I try to increase my abilities and knowledge. I started few years ago with private reserves and I am now managing few men in a reserve in Kalahari.
I am very happy with the results I was able to achieve in these few years of work but I really try my best to be better and better every day. In some way I try to motivate myself to achieve more knowledge and higher roles gradually in order to be able to have a deeper impact in this war.
- What do you do in a typical day on duty?
There are many legendary visions about the job of the rangers all over the globe.
I can say, first of all, that for sure this job is not for everyone.
It requires great will and to be a special kind of person in many way.
Living in the bush, handling risks and fighting to protect the population of our animals is part of our duty and we have to complete many difficult tasks every day, mostly in a dynamic and unforgiving environment.
Lots of driving, patrolling and field control is most of what we do.
Each day we have to patrol and check our fence on the perimeter, this is about 200 km driving and we have to do this twice, in teams of two.
Tracking also covers a great part of our duty since we have to look for eventual signs of trespassers constantly. The toughest and most demanding part of our work is living in the bush even if it is not a problem for me but it’s definitely not the right place for untrained people that might come from abroad and that pretend to be able to handle our territory and our threat.
It requires much more than just wanting it.
- Which will be your next steps?
As I said, also considering my age, I am very satisfied with where I got up to now. I am a anti-poaching supervisor and this is already a very challenging. Certainly it’s also crucial to keep on being motivated and focused without waiting for the future to come from the heavens.
I have got some ideas for the future but I don’t want to speak about all of it at once, something must remain a secret for now.
My ultimate dream would be working for anti-poaching also in other areas of Africa, in the heart of the problem, but for now my place is here.
We very deeply thank Jethro Dell for his release and we will work to support him, help him in his job and involve him in some future collaboration with our community.
We wish him the greatest luck for his upcoming plans!
Andrea Silvestri
for Insider Release
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