A picture appears to be in the process of going viral:
Via UNILAD / Facebook
I saw it on the Facebook page of the British website (magazine?) UNILAD (h/t Jason), with the following caption:
There are poachers in Africa currently hunting Rhino. This woman hunts the poachers.
The “hunts the poachers” line sort of caught my attention. (Yes, yes, other aspects of the photo caught my attention, too. I’ll get to that.)
The awesome blog TYWKIWDBI wrote about this woman, Kinessa Johnson, yesterday, and clarified that the organization where she works, VETPAW, employs ex-military servicemembers to secure locations where poachers are known to operate. The goal is to dissuade poachers from trying anything in that area, not to seek them out and engage them (which is what “hunt” sort of implies). That doesn’t make it any less bad-ass by any measure.
VETPAW (Veterans Employed to Protect African Wildlife), according to its website:
provides meaningful employment to post-9/11 veterans, utilizing their expertise to train and support Africa’s anti-poaching rangers to prevent the extermination of keystone African wildlife, and the disastrous economic and environmental impact it would have.
A Marine from Tampa, Florida named Ryan Tate apparently started the organization about a year ago:
Tate, who served in Iraq, and his team assembled former active military members to help train African park rangers.
“We’ve done a great job of finding guys that are perfect for this and not just any guys off the streets that’s coming out of the military,” Tate said.
They will travel to Tanzania in July as part of their pilot program to scout out three different areas of the country where poaching is a problem.
Tate said, they’ll use their reconnaissance, communication, medical, and tracking skills to hunt the poachers and prevent them from killing endangered species.
They’ll also train locals so they can maximize the small amount of manpower over a larger area.
Judging from its Facebook page, the organization supports some good causes in addition to its main mission, such as helping military veterans adopt the retired military dogs that served with them, and enacting bans on ivory in the U.S. A Google news search of “VETPAW” didn’t turn up much of anything, i.e. criticisms or negative news. In today’s world of abundant information, that almost seems like an endorsement.
As for Ms. Johnson, yes, that picture is pretty hawt, but let’s not let that distract from the issue. (The world has many hot, tatted bad-asses, but very few of them serve in Afghanistan and then protect wildlife with what appears to be a SI Defense 300WM PETRA Rifle. Respect that, yo.) She did a Reddit AMA yesterday, and it’s clear that she really is as bad-ass as the picture suggests. (Also, she has a pittie and can do a shit-ton of pull-ups, so more respect.)
She’s providing updates on her Facebook and Instagram pages.
So yeah, respect.
Mostly-unrelated note: her Reddit AMA led to my discovery of the Baby Elephant GIFs subreddit. So much for today’s productivity.
