An environment protection official pledged intensified efforts to deal with the grievances of park rangers over lack of an insurance coverage, outstanding pay and a staff shortage.
“We have identified the main problems in the environmental protection sector and have solved many of them. You will witness tangible progress in this relation by the year-end [March 20],” Commander of the Department of Environment’s Protection Unit Jamshid Mohabbatkhani said on Tuesday.
He was addressing a ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad to mark National Ranger Day, where some park rangers were honored for their outstanding service.
The national occasion comes a week ahead of the World Ranger Day.
Mohabbatkhani said his organization is seeking to ensure that rangers are provided with adequate insurance to cover potential expenses they might incur in the line of duty.
“We are pursuing the insurance issue to relieve the concerns of the park wardens about blood money payable to poachers, if the rangers have had to use their weapons as a last resort,” he was quoted as saying by ISNA.
“Apart from that, the government recently allocated 30 billion rials [$690,000] for that purpose. That sum has been used to settle the blood money owed by 18 rangers.”
Park wardens are entitled by law to be awarded for detecting and reporting environmental crimes within the preserved areas.
Long-Overdue Bonus
Some of those awards are long overdue.
“The ranger must be paid 70% of the fine levied on the perpetrators involved in the cases he reports. Such payments have remained unpaid since three years ago. The issue demands our attention,” Mohabbatkhani said.
He added the protection department is in talks with the Law Enforcement Force to use conscripts to fill part of its staff shortage.
That issue was also raised by Isa Kalantari, DOE’s director, in his speech to the ceremony.
The number of rangers under the DOE’s employment is even barely enough to meet 50% of its workforce needs, Kalantari said, adding, “The environmental protection unit plans to recruit 300 rangers every year.”
Park rangers have long complained of poor pay and legal protection and many have been charged in the past with manslaughter for killing illegal hunters in gunfights.
This is while poachers and offenders have killed around 120 park rangers and injured about 150 over the past four decades.
The murder of three rangers in mid-2016 gave further impetus to a campaign demanding better legal protection for park wardens. That improved protection was enshrined in a DOE-drafted bill that is getting through the final stages of review by the Majlis Legal and Judicial Commission to go before parliament.
The bill will ease the restrictions the park rangers face in using their weapons in gunfights against poachers.
