Six Rangers, Two grants: How Collette’s Second Investment is Changing Sea Turtle Conservation in Kenya

Sep 10

4 min read

Before he became one of six Giriama fishermen now trained as Ocean Sole Turtle Ranger, Baraka made his living from the sea — in a community where fishing, and historically the taking of turtles and their eggs, formed part of how families survived. Today, several mornings a week, he cycles the sand near Bofa and Kwa Chambo, kitted out with a torch, bucket and wet-weather gear, looking for signs of nesting turtles instead.

That shift — from extraction to conservation, and from dependence on marine resources to a paid alternative livelihood — is the idea behind Ocean Sole’s TurtleSafe Rangers programme, and it is why a $10,000 grant from Collette matters far beyond the number alone.

Two Turtle Rangers, Salim & Omar, relocating a Turtle nest on Bofa Beach, Kenya

Ali one of our Turtle Rangers during a night patrol using a red light so as not to distress any turtles.

Why turtle nesting beaches need active protection

Sea turtles nesting along Kenya's coast face threats that have built up over decades: nest disturbance, bycatch in fishing gear, coastal development and, in some communities, the harvesting of eggs or turtles for food or trade. Conservation organisations across East Africa, including the Kenya Wildlife Service, have long identified community involvement — rather than enforcement alone — as the most durable way to reduce these pressures.

Patrols matter because turtle nests are vulnerable in a narrow window: from the moment eggs are laid to the weeks before hatchlings emerge. A ranger walking the beach at the right time can be the difference between a protected nest and a lost one.

Dead Sea Turtle found on the beach, appears she lost her head through entanglement in fishing gear. Other carcasses have been found after being poached on land during nesting season.

How TurtleSafe turns conservation into a livelihood

The Collette-backed expansion of TurtleSafe is built around a simple sequence: conservation creates employment, employment creates education, education creates a stronger visitor experience, and that experience supports the case for eco-tourism — which in turn eases the fishing pressure that endangered the turtles in the first place.

In December 2025, Collette's $10,000 ‘Impact Beyond’ grant funded the training and equipping of six Giriama fishermen as Turtle Rangers, each provided with a bicycle and field gear — T-shirts, red torches, buckets and raincoats — to patrol the coastline around Bofa and Kwa Chambo. For six families in one of the fishing community's most economically stretched groups, it means stable income for the first time. The original proposal also envisioned patrols across roughly 12.7km of coastline and a permanent Turtle Education Hub reaching hundreds of visitors and students each year; that fuller rollout is the next phase of the programme.

Turtle Rangers with their Snorkelling gear in hand, ready to take tourists on a tour to see the reef.

This is the second of three grants in a partnership that began with a $2,500 microgrant in 2024, which equipped the Ocean Sole Mamaz's bead-making programme and regenerative farm — proof that Collette's support builds on what's already working rather than starting new programmes from scratch.

Why a travel company is funding turtle rangers

Collette is a travel company, not a conservation charity — and that is precisely why the partnership is interesting. Collette's own tour groups don't visit this stretch of coast: the itinerary is already full, skews toward older travellers, and the coast is a longer journey from where their groups are based. The guest-facing part of the Collette partnership happens elsewhere, at Ocean Sole's Nairobi workshop, already part of Collette's Kenya tour. TurtleSafe is a different kind of investment: support for destination-level conservation that Collette's own travellers may never see in person.

The longer-term ambition is to develop a community-led eco-tourism model that protects sea turtle habitat and the centuries-old corals found in the area, while creating sustainable livelihoods for the people who protect this coastline. Revenue generated through eco-tourism will help fund ongoing conservation and provide a sustainable source of income for future community-led marine conservation initiatives.

What this means for the coastline — and the people on it

The rangers who patrol this stretch of coast are not volunteers being asked to protect a resource at the expense of their own livelihoods. They are paid members of the fishing community, using generations of local knowledge in a different way — to protect the marine life they once depended on extracting. By attaching dignity, income and opportunity to conservation, the programme creates a viable alternative livelihood and helps reduce pressure on already stressed marine resources. That is what gives the model a better chance of lasting.