National Park Rangers

"The MoE Park Rangers Program are established through the official partnership between Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in Beppu, Japan and the Japanese Ministry of the Environment (MoE) in 2021"

The partnership between APU and MoE oversaw the first internship program being established. Through this internship program, interns are being tasked to assists the daily task of the park rangers such as participating in various meetings and conferences with various stakeholders (e.g. governmental agencies, UNESCO, MoE Regional Meeting, etc), assisting on preservation and conservation efforts towards the natural environment of the Aso Kuju National Park to providing assistance on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) education for local kindergarten and primary school around Aso City.

In addition, various efforts on conserving the natural environment of the National Park had been done including providing support for the controlled burning activity to preserve and restore the grasslands, inspecting and carrying maintenance to the mountain infrastructure such as trail route and signboard to ensure the health and safety of climbers on Mount Aso and Kuju Mountain Range and daily inspection of others facilities inside the national park such as visitor center, waste disposal facilities and sanitation.

Through this internship program, interns are able to contribute to the following corresponding SDG such as:

• SDG 3 Good Health and Well-Being: Risk reduction efforts on providing daily maintenance on mountain infrastructure carried out by the MoE park rangers which to ensure the safety of every climbers and visitors of the National Park.

• SDG 4 Quality Education: Through various efforts on providing environmental education for local children's around Aso such as providing basic 3R knowledge on local kindergarten, controlled burning practice for primary to junior high school students, National Park card game to the presence of visitor centers inside the NP corresponds the Target 4.7 which ensure every learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.

• SDG 13 Climate Action: Through the controlled burning activities which to preserve and restore the grassland. Grassland are able to removes CO2 from the air and converts it into the carbon compounds that it needs to live and grow. Burning this grass turns these carbon compounds into charcoal, which enters the soil and stays there. This effectively removes CO2 and greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and traps it in the soil.

• SDG 15 Life on Land: The controlled burning activities helps to preserve the grasslands which also serves as a important habitat for a highly diverse biodiversity such as insects, flowers and animals.