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Rangelands are the cornerstone of African pastoral production systems and rangeland health (RLH) is vital for the health of livestock and the people who depend on them. RLH is integrally linked to actions of livestock, humans, climate and management applied. Cognisant of this, the HEAL (One Health for Humans, Environment, Animals and Livelihoods) project has been demonstrating how RLH can be integrated into One Health interventions at a local level in pastoral areas of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. HEAL, a 12-year project started in 2019 with funding from Swiss Development Cooperation, reshapes service delivery into One Health Units (OHUs), which provides a sustainable, demand-driven and cost-effective integrated human, animal and RLH services. Key actors in implementation of OHUs are community-based health workers. In Ethiopia, these include the well-established systems of community-animal health workers (CAHWs) for livestock and health extension workers (HEWs) for humans, but there is no equivalent system for rangeland. In response to this, HEAL is developing a community-based rangeland health workers (CRHWs) system. A central pillar of this is piloting CRHWs, following a review of current practice, lessons learned from CAHWs and HEWs, and consultations with experts and communities. Initially, CRHWs are providing information and raising awareness on invasive species and establishing community RLH monitoring system for these. To instil opportunities for CRHWs to be self-supporting, nurseries for growing and selling grass and tree seedlings were established in agreement with community leaders. This paper shares experiences of piloting CRHWs and how this contributes to broader development and investment in RLH. Collaborative design from the beginning was important for increasing likelihood of uptake by government and communities besides considering sustainability and financing. Research played important role in assessing opportunity and application of CRHWs, developing support training materials and for sharing lessons learned.