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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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
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- @NevilleCLS
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CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites)
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Smart Parks
Founder of Smart Parks - www.smartparks.org / Founder of OpenCollar - https://opencollar.io
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Dzanga-Ndoki national park biodiversity monitoring
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 2 years 6 months ago | |
My colleagues* and I have developed a model for identifying changemakers from forest-dependent communities, and incubating their ideas (... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 2 years 9 months ago | |
You should check out Smart Parks (https://www.smartparks.org/) and Hack the Poacher (https://www.hackthepoacher.com/). Also - Fazil, M., & Firdhous, M. (2018... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 years 2 months ago | |
About a year ago, Lyn Watson from Australian Dingo Foundation approached me with an idea to develope a solution to reduce conflict between... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 years 8 months ago | |
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... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 years 8 months ago | |
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... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 4 years 2 months ago | |
A neoteric solution:- ADSMO(HWC): https://youtu.be/yG0Z5HaL_tc |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 4 years 6 months ago | |
Hi everybody! The IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force, the Global Environment Facility-funded and... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 4 years 7 months ago | |
Thanks Drue for your valuable input. This is certainly not to encourage killing venomouse snakes. We can actually incorporate the featurs you pointed out to save venomouse... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 4 years 7 months ago | |
Tusk are illegally traded by the poachers for earning profit out of it. This needs to be stopped. |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 4 years 9 months ago | |
Hi Aditya, If you haven't already found it, you should check out our last virtual meetup, it was all about tools and spaces for collaboration and we featured a number... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 5 years ago | |
Cool idea Ashwan. Looks similar to the virtual parks idea that Laurens is leading. Have you seen it? Also check out rewilding.io and get an entry in to the contest! |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 5 years 2 months ago |
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9 October 2019 8:45pm
Hi Nilaksha,
Interesting idea. My ideas are usually not that helpful, but I thought I would chime in with the following:
(1) Start small and local, this will help reduce the size of the training data set you will need. So if you can work with a specific set of communities in a particular area that has a known set of snake species, both venemous and non-venemous, you only need images for those species and you won't need as many.
(2) iNaturalist has a pretty decent database (not thousands, but hundreds) of identified images. I have no idea what the restrictions would be around getting access to the database, but this is a Citizen Science organization, so I don't THINK it should be too complicated, especially if your initial scope is limited.
(3) Venemous snakes need "love" too. PLEASE make sure the app does not encourage the locals to kill the venemous snakes unless absolutely necessary. While it is admirable to prevent the accidental killing of a non-venemous snake, you shoudl not be encouraging the purposeful killing of the venemous snakes, but should be encouraging people to stay clear if the snake is in the wild and get professional assistance if the snake somewhere that could be dangerous to humans or other animals.
(4) Look into organizations like the Rainforest Aliance, OpenAI, etc., which are non-profits doing work in or with AI, they might be able to help give you a leg up.
(5) If you start local, you could build into the app the contact information for the professionals to come in and deal with the dangerous snakes.
Hopefully some of this is useful.
Good luck,
Drue
10 October 2019 1:57pm
Thanks Drue for your valuable input.
This is certainly not to encourage killing venomouse snakes. We can actually incorporate the featurs you pointed out to save venomouse snakes as well. Ideally we can let the user know how to deal with a venomouse snake and whome to contact if he/she needs professional assistance.
Thanks again.
Nilaksha
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Hi Aditya,
If you haven't already found it, you should check out our last virtual meetup, it was all about tools and spaces for collaboration and we featured a number of members who have set up and are working on conservation focused makerspaces. You can watch in and connect to the members featured here.
Steph
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Hi Laurens,
Would be great to connect. Sent you a mesage directly.
Best,
Vance
14 March 2019 2:48am
Interesting conversation. From Tech side there is solution which we are workign on.... Its low cost and tech heavy. Attaching Idea
Toughts please.
14 March 2019 12:21pm
Cool idea Ashwan. Looks similar to the virtual parks idea that Laurens is leading. Have you seen it? Also check out rewilding.io and get an entry in to the contest!
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9 February 2019 6:23pm
I agree Nilanga, definitely a good PhD topic. The case you raise with elephants is of great concern I imagine, as elephants standing their ground leads me to think of only the most dire of outcomes. With predators, I think a good deal of any successful implementation of aversive approaches also relies on their being sufficient alternative prey/habitat for predators to avoid livestock areas. The same is true for any non-lethal approaches IMO. If alternatives aren't available, it might be all the more difficult to dissuade predators. Is this similar for elephants in this case (i.e. do they actually have alternative sites/food sources nearby that aren't in conflict)?
11 February 2019 3:04pm
You are right, Rob, in that when aggressive behavior in elephants results from more aversive techniques, the outcomes are not great for either party. It's a tough spot to be in since elephants are also extremely intelligent and can find ways to get past most deterrents. Electric fencing, when managed properly and are functioning appropriately, have been proven to be the most effective in keeping elephants out of crop of human-inhabited areas. But then again, elephants also figure out how to either drop things on the fence and break the current or find other ways past such barriers. There is work being done in various places to restore habitat,fodder plant species, and water and mineral sources that would keep elephants out of human areas, but the whole dynamic is changing overall in the face of massive habitat loss and impediments to movement in the form of corridor blockage or disruption, etc. In addition to doing reactive things like prevention and mitigation measures, it's so important to work on the drivers/root causes of the conflict, such as habitat loss and fragmentation. So it's key to work at both levels for longer term solutions to this issue overall.
11 February 2019 7:54pm
A very good summary all-round Nilanga. Only a wholistic approach can truly resolve conflict.
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23 January 2019 2:15pm
Hi Femke,
At the Biological records Centre we have been tackling these issues for over 50 years! You are right to point out that with citizen scientists you can collect/review a lot of data in a relativly short period of time. Our iRecord system collect 1 million observations in 2018, and just look at how many people are reviewing images over in the zooniverse (check out snapshot serengeti).
You are also right to point our that without strict protocols, and with varying abilities, the use of citizen scientists can introduce biases, which often leads to the impression citizen science data is of lower quality. There are ways to account for this statistically when you are working on data collected in the field, and for those reviewing images online both the zooniverse and iSpot have systems in place, such as reputation and multiple reviews of a single image to reach consensus.
There is a good report on using citizen science here.
Best,
Tom
23 January 2019 5:10pm
I agree with Tom's comments. A project I work with has used Zooniverse to identify animals in camera trap images, We include a field guide that helps reviewers with making trickier distinctions such as deer versus elk (challenging in partial views with IR images). We require each image to be identified by thirty reviewers before scoring it. That allows us to either be quite confident in an identification or to recognize it requires expert review. We have seen no examples of intentional misidentifications. The biggest problem is coming up with enough images to meet demand--some people will work for hours!
28 January 2019 10:12am
Thanks both for your comments, very interesting indeed! Also great to hear that so many people are eager to get involved in this kind of research and will participate with great enthusiasm.
Bets regards,
Femke
The Ecosulis Rewilding Tech Challenge
14 January 2019 12:00am
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