Human-wildlife conflict is a shockingly common problem, often with enormous consequences for both individual animals and entire populations.
When human-wildlife conflict comes to mind, you may immediately think of wildlife crime instead - which isn't wrong, since many regions with wildlife crime problems like poaching are also areas where people may frequently deal with human-wildlife conflict, causing the two issues to go hand-in-hand. But human-wildlife conflict is a much broader issue encompassing many ways that human presence and interference can cause problems for us and animals alike. Human-wildlife conflict includes:
- Elephants trampling a farmer's crops, resulting in retaliation
- New real estate developments infringing on ecosystems where predator species live, leading to predators having less territory and less food, which in turn leads to predators attacking domestic animals and livestock
- Freeways dividing the territory of animals like mountain lions, leading to wildlife venturing into neighborhoods or being killed by cars
- Lead bullets used in hunting causing scavengers like condors to die of lead poisoning
These are just a few examples of how humans can negatively impact wildlife, and it's clear to see how many of these scenarios could escalate. Human-wildlife conflict solutions don't just include ways in which we can prevent these issues (for example, through tracking predators, monitoring populations' territories, or building barriers and wildlife crossings monitored by sensors), but also the ways in which we can help people connect with wildlife and care about learning to live alongside them.
If you're interested in solutions that can prevent human-wildlife conflict, join this group and get to know the people who are working to protect and save species around the world!
Header image: Casey Allen on Unsplash
I am a Senior researcher and PI in Conservation and Animal Ecology at Fondazione Edmund Mach, Trento, Italy. I am coordinator of EUROMAMMALS, member of the advisory board of the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration at CMS, and President of the International Bio-Logging Society
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Spanish veterinarian interesting wildlife conservation
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I am biologist, I have studied wild life and ethnobiology at Amazon and caimans in Brazil
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- @AnnabelL
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Conservation Writer, Storyteller, & Digital Strategist
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Petnerup
Animal tech startup founder
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- @NinaBaranduin
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Student in the Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Risk PhD CDT at the University of Cambridge
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Msc student on wildlife management and conservation
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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
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- @evan21
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University of St Andrews
Final Year Biology & Geography Undergraduate at the University of St Andrews
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- @NevilleCLS
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CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites)
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The 2020 Tusk Awards are now accepting nominations of outstanding individuals who have made a significant impact on conservation in Africa. These nominations offer the rare and exciting opportunity to honor your peers...
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The Arribada Initiative is back with an update on their thermal elephant alert system which aims to reduce human-elephant conflict (HEC). The success of their system rests on the ability of a camera to accurately...
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31 May 2019
As a winner of the Human Wildlife Conflict Tech Challenge, Smart Parks is working in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and WILDLABS to develop a smart solution that uses the power of the Internet of...
25 March 2019
Arribada recently returned from field sites in Assam, India where they tested the image quality and detection abilities of low-cost thermal sensors for detecting elephants in conflict areas. Arribada is working on these...
1 March 2019
Each year Tusk honours extraordinary individuals battling on the frontline in the fight for wildlife conservation in Africa. Nominate your 2019 Conservation Heroes now.
12 February 2019
With the aim of advancing rewildling-related technology in the UK and introducing new talent and ideas into the field of rewildling, Ecosulis is thrilled to announce the launch of their first ever Rewilding Tech...
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Arribada just returned from their first thermal camera field trials in Greenland, where they tested the image quality and detection abilities of their chosen thermal sensors in an arctic climate, assessed their...
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi Danilo. you seem very passionate about this initiative which is a good start.It is an interesting coincidence that I am starting another project for the coral reefs in the... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Camera Traps, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Community Base, Connectivity, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps, Wildlife Crime | 3 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hi Jacobo,We have launched a new tracking/logging/finding technology which you may find of interest https://www.tagranger.com/ Based on LoRaWAN (but with yor own... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 months 3 weeks ago | |
Fire detection is a sort of broad idea. Usually people detect the products of fire, and most often this is smoke.Many home fire detectors in the US use a radioactive source... |
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Community Base, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools, Sensors, Wildlife Crime | 3 months 4 weeks ago | |
Hi folks! Happy 2024 and thanks in advance for your patience in case I over-used tags. If you’re using any form of natural language... |
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AI for Conservation, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Early Career, East Africa Community, Emerging Tech, Ending Wildlife Trafficking Online, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps, Wildlife Crime, Women in Conservation Tech Programme (WiCT) | 4 months 1 week ago | |
Will you accept personal/hobbyist focused on conservation on their small plots of land (10-100 acres)?I would, and know others, who would happily pay more than the official... |
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Camera Traps, Climate Change, Community Base, Connectivity, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Sensors, Wildlife Crime | 5 months ago | |
Hi Eva, Me and my colleagues run a small NGO based on Yogyakarta in Indonesia, although our projects are spread around the country. One of our active project is working with... |
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Community Base, Biologging, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Marine Conservation, Remote Sensing & GIS | 5 months ago | |
Hi,This is a really late answer but I was new to wildlabs then. I have a security appliance that uses state of the AI models and user defined polygon areas of interest that... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict, Camera Traps, Sensors | 5 months ago | |
Hi Zach,Our organization (SEE Turtles) has a campaign working on the illegal tortoiseshell trade around the world called Too Rare To Wear. We are going to be updating our Global... |
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Community Base, Conservation Dogs, Early Career, East Africa Community, Ending Wildlife Trafficking Online, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 5 months ago | |
@lucyeking99 opened this month's Variety Hour with a tour of Save the Elephant's evidence based toolbox of tried and... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 5 months 1 week ago | |
Hello Sam,What would you say would be the estimate cost was for the first version Instant Detect 1.0 ? That might help my research ? |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Sensors | 6 months ago | |
Hi Antoine, Sorry about the late reply. The field trials were abandoned mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We're planning to improve our prototype and conduct field trials... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 6 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hey Stephanie,Thanks a lot! Sorry I missed your message but of course I can ask our users about their experience with sensors! |
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Biologging, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Marine Conservation, Protected Area Management Tools | 7 months 1 week ago |
Shark Lab Data Analyst
24 October 2022 7:12pm
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
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Mara Predators Hackathon
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Online Hackathon: Predators conservation in the Maasai Mara
22 August 2022 10:32am
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
Human-wildlife conflict one of the greatest threats to wildlife species - WWF and UNEP report
29 July 2022 1:27pm
18 September 2022 3:55am
International Workshop on Animal Movement Ecology & Human Mobility
22 July 2022 7:25pm
30 August 2022 6:24pm
CERES TAG
22 July 2022 3:36am
Hello there
1 July 2022 5:00pm
Temporarily marking of polar bears entering villages
27 November 2019 1:49pm
3 June 2022 2:49pm
Hi Femke, did you get any responses to this question? If so I would be interested in hearing what came up.
Long ago I was trapping small mammals and we would use picric acid (fluorescent yellow) to dye the hair on the bellies of mice and voles. It is a bit explosive esp if it drys out but we never had any issues of that sort. Maybe there is a safe and stable form that could be deployed via paint gun - I seem to recall that the Polar Bear Alert Team in Churchill Manitoba tested paintballs on polar bears but not sure of the results.
Stephen
17 June 2022 8:09pm
Hi @Femke_Hilderink , long time no speak!
What an interesting problem/project!
Does it have to be paint, as there was this project a while back:
I don't know how it's going, but am really interested to hear anything...
If something like paint is preferable, maybe drones delivering it could work? I am super interested in using drones to drop tracking tags onto animals, and polar bears are big enough targets to give this a rip snorting go! Happy to discuss.
I had a colleague that used food dye to temporarily colour Australian ibis at refuse sites. If memory serves they trialled sprinklers and super soakers for delivery with some success. I can try and dig up more information if you like?
Or could their foot pads be painted, as maybe they could 'pick up the paint' by walking over an area with paint on the ground? That way their coats are left relatively untouched...
Looking forward to hearing other ideas!
Cheers,
Rob
International Platform to exchange knowledge and experiences about solutions/initiatives on Human-Wildlife conflict issues
31 January 2022 11:31am
31 January 2022 11:32am
Why this collaboration platform? What entails to become ENCOSH member?
Tackling human-wildlife coexistence issues requires an holistic approach with various initiatives/measures/strategies. Many of these have been tested in various places over the world by various stakeholders. But there is a lack of sharing these initiatives across the world. Besides, many could be adapted in various context and for different animal species. It is like a big puzzle with all pieces out there but spread out.
This is why this collaborative platform was created to gather all extant initiatives/measures/strategies and multi-stakeholders involved in these "solutions" to share their knowledge and experiences so that everyone can learn from each other and better tackling such issues locally.
Any user who registers on the platform becomes members, the only engagement is to accept the privacy policy and terms & conditions. Members can have access to all the platform features. They can also share their own initiatives/measures (not a whole project) if they want to contribute. This will create technical sheets that our team will first review before sharing on the platform and will be then available to all and downloadable in many languages for use in different countries and on the field.
Tech, Evidence and Financial Compensation for livestock losses due to predators
13 November 2020 4:03pm
20 November 2020 7:47pm
Chavoux....
BRILLIANT!
Regarding collaring, I am developing collars for livestock, not for Jaguars. BCB detects Jaguars using Smart Cameras (smart fences are on the plans as well) and that information is inside livestock collars, so you can get early alerts if domestic animals are in dangerous zones (people here release their animals for feeding, etc). If no Smart cameras are present, you can tag the areas manually if you have the evidence from camera trapping or inhabitants (I developed simple panic buttons as a way to engage local inhabitants). I was about to test all this however the pandemic imposed trip restrictions since the early days of March!
That's regarding tech. Your views on the human side are really interesting, I will talk about this soon with Conicet Researchers, I guess more synchronization with NGOs are needed, there are a lot of political things in the middle however, this sounds quite good to me: "predator friendly meat" brand, if you want, please drop me an email at [email protected] so I can get yours or subscribe to the BCB's site (The site is to try to encourage other people to use tech and talk about the Jaguar situation here, it is not for fundraising)
There are some simple things that can be done to make a huge difference, tech is only an enabler in my opinion. I collected a few tips also here (not mine, I'm a tech guy but I liked the drawings, they were made with love for Jaguars!)
www.wildedge.info/jaguarcampaigni
Warm regards Chavoux! I hope other people will read your words as well!
10 November 2021 2:02pm
Hello Carlos and Chavoux,
Interesting exchange, thank you! Working on HWC, boh locally on Human-Jaguar coexistence in French Guyana and globally through the ENCOSH platform, it would great to learn more from your initiatives and experiences!
An opportunity to do so is to join us and contribute to the ENCOSH platform: https://encosh.org/en/
It is a recent international collaborative platform to promote the exchange of knowledge, experiences and ideas among all stakeholders worldwide to better tackling Human-Wildlife coexistence issues. A forum will be very soon included also.
Your contribution would be meaningful by submitting some of your initiatives to this community. Besides, you could find and make comments on a list of almost 100 extant initiatives used to enhance Human-Wildlife interactions worldwide.
I remain available if you need further information or guidance.
All the best
Tommy Gaillard
3 December 2021 5:12pm
This is an awesome thread and very enlightening. Thank you! I started reading this as Oregon recently had an entire pack of wolves poisoned, and I wanted to understand the viewpoints that go into these conversations. Thank you!
Technical Difficulties: The Death of Giants
3 November 2021 12:00am
EarthRanger Announces Inaugural Conservation Tech Award Recipients
3 November 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: A Deployment Checklist
13 October 2021 12:00am
Incubating grassroots innovations (tech/non-tech) to mitigate conflict
16 August 2021 8:55am
Tech4Wildlife Leaders: Understanding Endangered Primate Populations
2 June 2021 12:00am
Tech4Wildlife Leaders: Resolving Human-Giraffe Conflict
21 May 2021 12:00am
Margo Gadfly: A Versatile Wildlife Deterrent
31 March 2021 12:00am
Warn elephants using infrasound?
25 April 2018 1:30pm
17 March 2021 11:22am
Good day Lily.
I stumbled upon this post of yours.
Have you been able to make any advancement on this topic, or get any feedback from anyone?
I have been asked a similar question by a group, looking at early warning systems for large mammals, like elephants, of possible danger situations.
On my side, it is still a very new project, however, my use case has more to do with the trains that kills the elephants, but we also have a use case for early warning systems to recognize poachers and early warning systems to intercept any possible threat.
So if you are in a position, and willing to share any information, I would like to find out more, if there has been any developments regarding this topic aon your side.
Kind regards
Mischa
26 March 2021 4:23pm
Hi,
Generating infrasound is generally energy intensive and expensive. You can google "infra-subwoofer" and despair at the prices! But those are for audiophiles. I came across a fan type speaker design a long time ago that I think can be adapted, Another possibility is to use pyrotechnics to generate infrasound, but that would not be reusable and I suspect development will be even more of a headache. An intriguing possibility is to use basically a fogger - - those noisy smoky fumigators -- but built to produce the lower frequency.
26 March 2021 4:25pm
You should check out Smart Parks (https://www.smartparks.org/) and Hack the Poacher (https://www.hackthepoacher.com/).
Also -
Fazil, M., & Firdhous, M. (2018, December). IoT-enabled smart elephant detection system for combating human elephant conflict. In 2018 3rd International Conference on Information Technology Research (ICITR) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Shaffer, L. J., Khadka, K. K., Van Den Hoek, J., & Naithani, K. J. (2019). Human-elephant conflict: A review of current management strategies and future directions. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 6, 235.
That last paper is a nice overview of different methods, and they have a section on acoustic strategies.
Webinar: 'Advances in use of SMART approach, tools and technology'
12 March 2021 12:00am
How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation?
8 February 2021 12:00am
Predator Deterrent - Human Effigy Based
3 October 2020 2:15am
Audio play back device when elephant crop raids
7 November 2019 7:55am
23 September 2020 7:27am
I've worked on a similar project to try to scare lions away from bomas in Kenya that's pretty much a bunch of stuff from Adafruit rigged together with cheap marine speakers in an overly complicated custom case (picture is of previous generation, new generation in development). We also run LEDs to show various light displays. I imagine you could imitate a muzzle flash to deepen the illusion of gunfire. I'm also happy to discuss things (although I don't think I can match the technical expertise of Freaklabs).
27 September 2020 1:57am
Suraci et al. have published a few papers about the use of an automated behavioral response system for sound playback when triggered by a camera trap. Their methods (see supplementary materials) are entirely open source and I even commissioned an engineer to make a few for me. The only issue is that the MP3 players need a separate battery pack to keep them charged or need to be charged weekly, as the sound runs continuosly since there would otherwise be a delay between the camera trigger and the MP3 player being turned on. This could probably be fiddled with to suit your needs, if the previous options don't work out.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.12711
27 September 2020 3:31am
We actually designed Boombox, the audio player shown above, based on the ABRS system by the Suraci paper and with Dr. Meredith Palmer. We made some optimizations on it since the paper advocates an approach to infer when the camera was triggered. We reverse engineered our camera traps and took the actual trigger signal from the trailcam PIR motion sensor. Later, we were contacted by one of the authors of the paper and he mentioned they had come to the same conclusion.
We built the MP3 playback system using a discrete MP3 decoder IC which allowed us more control over playback, power management, and we could pick out the output amplifier to drive the speakers. We knew we would need to put the system to sleep and immediately play sounds on wakeup which most players aren't suited to do.
We also made it so that it's solar rechargeable with lithium-ion batteries so that it could last in the field as long as possible. Unfortunately we couldn't use that feature because there's no point in outlasting the trailcams. But for this application, it seems we might be able to use the solar recharging functionality.
We've volunteered for a possible TechTutors season 2 workshop on open source MP3 playback and recording with Arduino. We're waiting to discuss it with Steph and Ellie. If this sounds interesting, please let us know.
Challenge: ElephantEdge
11 August 2020 12:00am
Grassroots Innovations for Wildlife Conservation
19 May 2020 12:00am
Get To Know FIT
6 May 2020 12:00am
Era of the Condor: A Species' Future in Recovery
5 May 2020 12:00am
Locally-Brewed Conservation Technology from a Small Town in North Bengal
10 April 2020 12:00am
Technology Showroom of Artificial Intelligence (AI) aided Elephant Early Warning Systems
6 March 2020 6:09pm
19 March 2020 9:15am
Hi @Tim+Vedanayagam
Thank you for posting this. I'd be happy to contribute to the thermal sensing work under way. Can you confirm - have you built a thermal AI model and trained / labelled data for a particular camera?
We have been training a model for low cost (Lepton 3.5) thermal cameras via a challenge with WWF / Wildlabs and have 30,000 labelled images as our training dataset of Asian elephants. We're focusing on Deeplabel and YOLO with a plan to port to Tensorflow and it will be open source, so applicable for others to use and adopt in their early warning systems that use thermal.
More info here - https://www.zsl.org/blogs/conservation/zsl-whipsnade-zoo-becomes-a-space-for-high-tech-wild-elephant-conservation
Kind regards,
Alasdair
29 September 2022 4:05am