- Neddy Mulimo argued that ranger welfare was not charity but strategy, insisting that effective conservation depends on whether rangers have water, shelter, training, and institutional backing to make sound decisions under pressure.
- His own path into conservation began far from the bush, shaped by education, mentorship, and early encounters with risk, including a near-fatal buffalo attack that nearly drove him out of the profession.
- Over four decades, he rose from driver and educator to anti-poaching leader and mentor, helping build specialist units while remaining focused on the people doing the work, until his death in April 2025 after a battle with cancer.
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
In much of Africa, conservation is discussed in the language of landscapes and species: elephant corridors, lechwe floodplains, and the slow arithmetic of births and deaths. On the ground, it is also a labor question. The work is done by people who walk long hours, sleep badly, work in dangerous circumstances, and carry responsibility that is rarely matched by pay, equipment, or public notice. A ranger can spend days without clean water and still be expected to make good judgments at night, under stress, against armed men, in places where help may be hours away.
That gap between what the job requires and what it is given was one of the subjects that Neddy Mulimo returned to, with a mixture of pride and impatience. “According to a recent study, the average ranger works almost 90 hours a week. Over 60% have no access to clean drinking water on patrol or at outpost stations. And what’s more, over 40% regularly go without overnight shelter,” he wrote, arguing that better welfare was not charity but strategy. Funding, he thought, should buy competence and resilience as much as boots and rifles.
Mulimo, a Zambian who spent roughly four decades in conservation, began far from the romantic idea of the bush. Growing up in Lusaka’s Matero township, he once wanted to be a truck driver. A school club changed the direction of his life. Later, a trip to Treetops School Camp in Kafue National Park did the rest. He found, as he put it, that he preferred “a quiet life in the bush to city life,” and he came to see education as the ignition point for protection.
He became a driver anyway, first for the Wildlife and Environmental Conservation Society of Zambia, delivering materials around Lusaka and Kabwe. Then he trained, moved into guiding and teaching, and eventually into the more exposed work of scouting and law enforcement. Early in his training he learned the costs. Approaching an injured, snared buffalo, he was nearly killed. He spoke of almost quitting, then talking himself back into the job: “These are the animals we have come here to look after. Now that I have survived, I’ve learned a lesson and should continue. The animals I had vowed to protect can pose a danger to me but that shouldn’t be a reason not to protect them.”
For years he worked in places with different kinds of pressure, like Kabwe, Mumbwa, and Blue Lagoon National Park. In Blue Lagoon, he rose through the ranks to become a wildlife police officer in charge of operations, and he improvised tactics suited to flat, open country, including trenches that allowed rangers to get close to suspects. He insisted on leading night patrols himself: “Anytime I asked my men to do something, I led the way. I didn’t just give them instructions.”
Retirement did not hold. In 2012, after reports of poaching along the Lunga River, he was called back to train younger rangers. Soon after, he joined Game Rangers International and helped establish, then run, a Specialist Anti-Poaching Unit. The work relied not only on patrols but on information networks and patient coordination. He was proud of the operational results, but just as focused on the people doing the job. “I enjoy taking care of rangers and making sure they have everything they need. They should never feel abandoned. They should always feel highly regarded,” he said.
In 2022 he was named Tusk Wildlife Ranger of the Year and traveled to London to receive the award at Hampton Court Palace, presented by Prince William. He described the moment with surprise and emotion, calling it “the world recognizing me, the world thanking me.” Those who worked with him tended to emphasize something less ceremonial: a steady mentor with a practical mind, lobbying for better conditions and pushing younger officers to think clearly when it was hardest.
Mr Mulimo died on April 8th, 2025, after what a battle with prostate cancer. He spent a working life arguing, in effect, that conservation is not only about animals. It is also about whether the people standing between wildlife and the market for its parts are equipped to endure.
Header image: Neddy Mulimo in the field. Image courtesy of Giraffe Creatives Portraits.
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