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Human-Wildlife Coexistence / Feed

The Human–Wildlife Coexistence (HWC) group is a collaborative hub for conservationists, technologists, field researchers, entrepreneurs, and innovators exploring solutions to HWC globally. The group provides a space to share practical tools, pilot novel interventions, connect global communities, and amplify projects that help communities and wildlife coexist. The group emphasizes community voices, socio-economic challenges, and equitable resource sharing, ensuring human perspectives are understood alongside wildlife needs. 

Group curators

Mandy Eyrich
University of Florida (UF)
Wildlife Conservation meets Experience Strategy -- 15+ years of cross-sector expertise specializing in user-centric technology and product strategy (UX research, UX/UI design), process optimization, and end-to-end agile product development, moving from ideation to iteration
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discussion

Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic Radar

David Gaynor

7 January 2024 6:50am

Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic RadarFor the last year my colleauges Prof. Mike Inggs (Radar - Electrical Engineering, Unviversity of Cape Town) and...

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David Guerin

7 January 2026 2:07am

Hi @DaveGaynor and team. I am really keen to pursue this with some practical testing in Kenyan conservancies. What is the status of this effort, and could we meet to discuss how to take it forward as part of the Global Conservation Tech and Drone Forum in Nairobi, 2-6 March. I am chair of the Society for Conservation Biology Drone and Data Working Group and would like to discuss this at our inaugural meeting on 20th January.  https://wildlabs.net/discussion/scb-drones-and-data-working-group-society-conservation-biology 

David Guerin

8 January 2026 2:53am

Hi team, Can you please provide an update on where this effort sits now? The original post from January 2024 described three trials of airborne synthetic aperture radar for detecting snares and gin traps with foliage-penetrating radar scanning at 120 m AGL and generating geolocated alerts back into EarthRanger with identity and confidence metrics.

I want to add this as one of our competitions at the Global Conservation Tech & Drone Forum www.GCTDF.org in Kenya in early March, and include it in the new SCB Drones and Data WG as a discussion: https://wildlabs.net/discussion/scb-drones-and-data-working-group-society-conservation-biology 
 

This would build on the recent launch of a hands-on Tech Innovation Challenge around of the ADS-B proximity alert ,  as a safety layer in real conservation field operations where pilots are often multitasking. Please let me know the current status, data availability, key contacts, and what next steps might look like if this is to be integrated into the Forum and the Working Group agenda.

Thanks.

[email protected] 

Harri Shopland-Reed

21 July 2026 8:20pm

Airborne synthetic aperture radar for detection of snares sounds really effective! I would love to learn more about this. Dogs are also amazing a detecting snares but of course can't cover the same distance and constant survellience. Is it possible to share the benefits and barriers of this work after the 3 trials?

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discussion

Camera trap recommendations

Stephanie M.

2 April 2026 11:40pm

Hi everyone! I’m looking for camera trap recommendations for a pilot study in Rwanda focused mostly on capturing small to large mammals (both domestic and wild).I’m hoping to find...

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Jorge Ahumada

13 July 2026 11:18pm

I really recommend GardePro. They are not too expensive and very resilient in the field.

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event

2nd International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence

Adrien Pajot

2 July 2026 4:13pm

The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group invites participants from governments, research institutes, NGOs, intergovernmental organisations, communities, foundations, companies and others...

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Jared Marley

3 July 2026 7:06am

Exciting! Is there a link for it? Any details for vendors?

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discussion

Call for Collaboration: Share your voice at ICTC next week! 

Mandy Eyrich

11 February 2026 3:29am

Hello, fellow WILDLAB-ers! I'm Mandy, your current Human-Wildlife Coexistence Group Leader!  :)I am heading to the ICTC conference in Peru next week and while reviewing the...

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Mandy Eyrich

19 February 2026 3:35am

Hi Anna!

Is there anything that sparks your curiosity, which I can address for you? Take a look at the upcoming day 2 and day 3 sessions, and if you see anything that intrigues you, please let me know! I'll happily join the session that aligns, and share your thoughts! ☺️

Kind regards,

Mandy

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discussion

Tiger coexistence challenges

Mandy Eyrich

20 April 2026 3:20am

Too Many Tigers, Jungle Too Small: Human-Animal Conflict In Land Of Mowgli Check out this recent article about tiger conservation and community coexistence challenges...

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Jared Moore

2 May 2026 6:32am

Hi Mandy, writing from Indonesia where we manage the Sumatra Merang Peatland Project (SMPP) which is in a landscape supporting some of the last Sumatran tigers. Our project is part of a corridor including two national parks and a few scattered conservation areas within active oil palm and Acacia plantations. There's not a lot of room for tigers and they do range through human communities or come into contact with plantation workers. 

Fatal attacks are rare but two occurred in 2022. We hold annual HWC trainings with communities but also celebrate International Tiger Day with them, having a light-hearted event with games, face paint, and education of the importance of biodiversity, even when scary. We emphasize common sense personal safety measures to reduce the potential for conflict. Luckily livestock aren't very common in this area so that conflict trigger is not a major issue. Mostly it's about restricting activity at dusk/night/dawn, travelling in groups, not running, etc. We haven't found any feasible tech options (tagging is beyond our scope/budget) but we do use camera traps to see if/when tigers are present in/around our project area. This can only do so much for HWC as it's not a rapid response tool but does indicate presence. 

Regarding your question "Who/what parties should be held responsible for the loss of life, both human and tiger? Can they be held responsible?" there isn't an easy answer! Indonesian law technically gives tigers the same right-to-life as humans but in practice reprisals of course happen. In our region the military did respond to the 2022 events with patrols and presence, but they were not allowed to shoot. Obviously there is no proactive recourse against the tiger itself as a responsible party. It's an opportunity to redouble efforts on community education to explain why the attacks occurred (both fatalities were at forest frontiers, crouching with back to the forest, etc) and how to avoid re-occurrence! 

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careers

Ecological Data Scientist

Lacey Hughey

21 April 2026 9:22pm

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, with 21 museums and the National Zoo. This position is located in the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology...

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discussion

HWC online document library now live

Stephanie O'Donnell

11 July 2018 3:32pm

The IUCN HWC task force has launched a new online document library. In the library, you will find some key literature on many human-wildlife conflict topics and species; from...

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Kristoffer Noriel Ordoñez

12 April 2026 6:32pm

We're still looking at the best option to deter warty pigs from raiding crops. I hope the answer to that is here somewhere in WILDLABS.

Kristoffer Noriel Ordoñez

15 April 2026 5:23am

That can be explored, yeah, but the thing with our warty pig here (the Mindoro Warty Pig) is that it's also an insectivore and is known to pillage termite and ant mounds-- and some of those can deliver quite painful bites. But yeah, thank you for the suggestion. It is indeed worth trying.

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discussion

Ultrasound/Infrasound Deterrent for Bears

Mare Luca

22 November 2025 11:50am

Hello WildLabs Community,My name is Luca and I represent Bearware. We are developing an integrated solution designed to mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC)...

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Jared Marley

17 February 2026 10:07pm

I just saw this Mare. I hate to be negative but sometimes bad ideas are contrary to conservation and need to be put to rest. Myself and my company are one of the leaders in human-bear conflict (including being a founding member of the Human-Bear Conflict Workshop) and you can check any North American bear practicioner to confirm this.

This is a bad idea and it won't work. You need to do a more thorough reivew of the conflict literature before investigating the specifics of sound. Your method is that of a deterrent - deterrents only work when attractants are managed. Further, the specific deterrent effect you are proposing is much too mild. We occasionally can get temporary impacts from heavy duty pain stimulus like rubber bullets. Audio deterrent are a mild effect and only work in specific contexts for very short durations.

The only place in the world a comprehensive aversive conditioning program has worked entirely is Kananaskis Country in Canada - and that is because ALL non-natural bear attractants have been completely removed. 

Within the context of Carpathian conflict, it is driven entirely by garbage access and roadside feeding, with backyard attractants only mattering for conservation when the first two have been dealt with. Obviously, this idea would only work on a fixed attractants - ie garbage dumps. I've seen female sows with cubs brave 20 adult male bears on garbage dumps (all of which will happily kill the cubs) to get a chance at feeding on garbage. A garbage feed bear can get more food in minutes than it could harvest on wild sources and they will brave death to do it. No deterrent can work without attractant management.

Kim Hendrikse

18 February 2026 8:10am

That's a good point. In such context there is still value in trying to avoid one species harming another species through tech though. But I'm thinking here in terms of early detection with the goal that people don't accidentally wander into the area and get harmed and to be able to send security to the area on time to avoid an attack.

But I've seen the situation you describe Jared in Romania, not in the mountains but a town close by. Lots of fast food joints, often unlicensed. And I understand the politics and culture essentially made the removal of the attractants something that was just not going to happen. Lots of people would walk through the domain at night and I've seen video of people walking hand in hand with a family of bears behind them of which they were completely unaware. The location did have security and cameras but the areas was just so vast that it was not possible manually be able to keep on top of it all. So here detecting bears early before they reach the place where people are and alerting security can definately be helpful.

I also think that simply setting off unpleasant things automatically when a bear is detected is a bad idea.

I think that in cases where an electronic deterrence maybe might make more sense, such as in an imminent and active attack from wolves on live stock (as opposed to wolves simply travelling past a location), the response should also be an interactive response by people. and ideally also be followed up by people going to the site. By imminent attack I mean seeing a wolve trying to dig under a fence, or attempting to jump over a fence. Unnecessary usage of some kind of electronic response just make's it less effective later (The boy who cried wolf?). Plus, it's all part of being fair to animals that we co-exist with.

With bears indeed I expect it's pretty much all as you describe above Jared, early warning to a trained responder make's more sense if the problem cannot be "solved" properly.

Jared, do you have experience with early warning detection systems to trained responders?

I think that the whole tech relating to good enough early warning detection systems is still in it's infancy. (In this case, my company is one of the leading companies in this tech :-) ) My tech itself is not really in it's infancy, it evolved a 13 year period, 6 years with AI, but field installations of the tech definately still is. In the case of bears, I only have one installation and it's in Greenland. And very much works as alerting a first responder.

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discussion

Women in Conservation Forum: 3 Weeks Today!!

Macayle Rose Guerin

9 February 2026 1:31am

The Women in Conservation Forum held in the Trademark Hotel on Monday the 2nd of March is happening 3 weeks from today!Our timetable is coming together well, with involvement from...

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Mandy Eyrich

11 February 2026 2:16am

Hi Macayle! My assumption is that this is an in-person only event...yes? If there is an option to join remotely or listen in, please do follow up and share with our Community! I would personally love to attend, and I am sure many others would as well! And if there may be any content that is publicized post the event, please do share that as well. :) Sounds like a fantastic initiative -- thank you for sharing! Cheers!

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