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Rangers are one of the new additions described in detail in Streets of Rogue 2's animal-focused devblog. They appear in two related forms: as NPCs in the world who police natural resource use, and as a planned playable character class with a strong link to wildlife.
Rangers as NPCs
As NPCs, Rangers do not take kindly to players who would happily rob the land of its natural resources, which is to say, more or less every character in a survival-crafting game. Their presence is intended to add friction to harvesting and animal-killing behavior, especially when the player would otherwise be acting freely. Rangers also operate Ranger outposts, which act as drop-off points for the humane-disposal option on animal-kill quests: knocked-out animals can be transported to a Ranger outpost rather than killed.
Rangers as a Playable Class
As a playable class, Rangers are designed as a beastmaster archetype. Ranger characters are able to tame, ride, and fight alongside most (and possibly all) types of animals they encounter. This makes them one of the most direct ways to make use of the game's deep animal roster: a Ranger party can include multiple animals as combat companions, with effectiveness improving over time the same way human NPC companions do.
Interactions with the Animal System
Because the Ranger class is built around animals, it benefits especially from the underlying systems described in Animals and Wildlife: which animals can be ridden depends on the character size and the animal's traits, animals can be kept at the player's home base for various benefits, and animals can fight on the player's behalf. The Ranger is the most opinionated class for engaging with these systems, but the rules apply to every class that chooses to interact with wildlife.
Release Status
Rangers were added to the alpha demo as NPCs in patch 30a. Their full beastmaster-class implementation is part of the broader plan for animal systems, with the developer noting that a large portion of animals (and by extension, full Ranger functionality) will arrive in content updates after the initial Early Access launch.