The Sea Ranger Service is the brainchild of Dutch environmental conservationist and social entrepreneur Wietse van der Werf. After having worked in environmental conservation for 25 years and being awarded a conservation prize for his innovative conservation efforts, he founded the Sea Ranger Service in 2016.
Inspiration for the Sea Ranger model came from the Civilian Conservation Corps; a public works programme launched by US president Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The programme resulted in 3 million unemployed young men being offered work, establishing 800 national parks and planting over 3,2 billion trees in the proces. Van der Werf set out to develop a similar model to strengthen ocean conservation.
Want to know more about the initiative? Dive into the Sea Ranger Service timeline to discover the milestones that brought the organisation to life.
Learning from the Civilian Conservation Corps model can make such a profound impact to the challenges the world faces today. We have implemented it as a modern-day maritime equivalent and it has proven very impactful.
