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
- @CDean
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Grad Student, UW-Stout, Beaver habitat biodiversity research, process based restoration
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Gui
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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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Noé
Hi! I am Aurélie, a dedicated French ornithologist and engineer specialized in conservation technologies. I am currently Program manager for the biodiversity of natural habitats' program in a French NGO called Noé.
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- @josh4coexistence
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Connecting people to nature positive solutions
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2023 Bachelor Degree Graduate from the College of African Wildlife Management, Mweka.
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Director of Icoteq Ltd, an electronics and software design consultancy developing wireless products and solutions to organisations working in the conservation, wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching sectors. Developers of the TagRanger® novel wildlife tracking products.
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FruitPunch AI
CTO and Founder of FruitPunch AI
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Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Science Researcher
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Saint Louis Zoo
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Careers
The Senior Conservation Technology Specialist will be responsible for providing technical advice and capacity development to GWP project teams on conservation technology, distilling challenges and lessons from project...
22 September 2022
Article
APPLY NOW! The Sovereign Nature Initiative has partnered with the Kenya Wildlife Trust to experiment with emerging technologies to support their predators' conservation work.Challenges will focus on:1. Lion...
30 August 2022
Article
An update on Ceres Tags products that are being used in conservation
22 August 2022
Article
Report says the problem is as much a development and humanitarian issue as a conservation concern and risks derailing the Sustainable Development Goals.
29 July 2022
Article
Ceres Tag sends just in time alerts and GPS location to have the power to track and trace.
22 July 2022
In her contribution to the Technical Difficulties Editorial Series, Christie Sampson shares how the devastating experience of losing collared elephants to an unexpected poaching threat lead to an improved understanding...
3 November 2021
On 3rd November 2021, Earthranger Announced Giraffe Conservation Foundation and Lion Guardians as the inaugral Conservation Tech Award Recipients. The two organizations are Harnessing the Power of Technology to Protect...
3 November 2021
In Alina Peter's and Kristen Snyder's contribution to the Technical Difficulties Editorial Series, you'll receive a practical checklist of factors and questions to consider at various stages of your conservation...
13 October 2021
Read our interview with Tasmin Alexander, early career conservationist and member of the CLP Future Conservationist Award-winning Preuss's Monkey Project research team. Working in the Obudu Plateau in Nigeria, this team...
2 June 2021
Read our interview with early career conservationist and CLP Future Conservationist Award recipient Owino Raymond, who is working with camera traps along the Kenya-Somalia border to understand and reduce conflict...
21 May 2021
Margo Supplies is excited to introduce the WILDLABS community to the Margo Gadfly, a new tool tested for its ability to prevent human-wildlife conflict! Read about how this hardware works, and how it protected livestock...
31 March 2021
Funding
Protecting elephants from conservation's most pressing issues like poaching and human-wildlife conflict requires big, bold, and innovative solutions. Hackster.io, Smart Parks, Edge Impulse, Microsoft, and several other...
11 August 2020
September 2024
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24 Products
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Ah, and perhaps have a look at conservationdrone.org 😉 |
+7
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Drones, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 week ago | |
Thank you so much! Now everything is in the hands of amazing organizations and companies! But the first results of the Disaster Management cohort are bringing a very optimistic... |
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AI for Conservation, Climate Change, Early Career, East Africa Community, eDNA & Genomics, Emerging Tech, Ending Wildlife Trafficking Online, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions | 2 weeks 1 day ago | |
Great!!! |
+32
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 2 weeks 2 days ago | |
@cmwainaina please take a look |
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Biologging, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Connectivity, Data management and processing tools, East Africa Community, Emerging Tech, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Marine Conservation, Protected Area Management Tools, Remote Sensing & GIS, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps | 3 weeks 4 days ago | |
Hi @nyangetamagesa , i'm so grateful for our input. |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict, Data management and processing tools, East Africa Community, Women in Conservation Tech Programme (WiCT) | 4 weeks ago | |
Thank you so much Adventina for sharing this wonderfully knowledge with me. |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 month ago | |
Hi everyone, it’s time I introduce our project titled “Innovative Sensor Technologies for Sustainable Coexistence: Advancing... |
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Biologging, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 month ago | |
I will start by asking: What will the future of conservation be if all the incentives do not hit the jackpot????In recent years, we have... |
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Conservation Tech Training and Education, East Africa Community, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 month ago | |
In that case, you might want to keep an eye on the project from @Lars_Holst_Hansen |
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Camera Traps, AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Protected Area Management Tools | 2 months ago | |
Hey @FleuryGS :)Bright Frog Game Studios is producing some really cool environmental education video games that more people should know about! I've gone ahead and added it as an... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 months ago | |
Thank you Robyn. Sure I will send more information to your email |
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Citizen Science, Acoustics, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 months 3 weeks ago | |
Totally agree.Inititally sceptical until I saw Helena and Graeme were involved.MJ |
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Acoustics, Citizen Science, Community Base, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 months 3 weeks ago |
Technical Difficulties: A Deployment Checklist
![](/sites/default/files/alina-.jpeg)
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
![](/sites/default/files/screen_shot_2021-06-14_at_4.42.53_pm-.png)
2 June 2021 12:00am
Tech4Wildlife Leaders: Resolving Human-Giraffe Conflict
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21 May 2021 12:00am
Margo Gadfly: A Versatile Wildlife Deterrent
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31 March 2021 12:00am
Warn elephants using infrasound?
25 April 2018 1:30pm
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'
![](/sites/default/files/smart-.jpg)
12 March 2021 12:00am
How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation?
![](/sites/default/files/2023-05/favicon%20on%20black_0.png)
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).
![](https://wildlabs.net/sites/default/files/community/images/ppd-1.jpg)
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
![](/sites/default/files/screen_shot_2020-08-11_at_3.09.29_pm-.png)
11 August 2020 12:00am
Grassroots Innovations for Wildlife Conservation
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19 May 2020 12:00am
Get To Know FIT
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6 May 2020 12:00am
Era of the Condor: A Species' Future in Recovery
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5 May 2020 12:00am
Locally-Brewed Conservation Technology from a Small Town in North Bengal
![](/sites/default/files/aditya_gangadharan-.jpg)
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
Webinar: IIED Community-Based Approaches to Tackling Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade
![](/sites/default/files/iiedlogo_0-.jpg)
17 March 2020 12:00am
Testing an Early Warning System to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict on the Bhutan-India Border
![](/sites/default/files/aditya_gangadharan-.jpg)
11 March 2020 12:00am
3 Ways Your Conservation Technology Could Become a Shiny Pile of Junk, and How to Avoid It
![](/sites/default/files/aditya_gangadharan-.jpg)
9 March 2020 12:00am
Accepting Applications: ArcGIS Solutions for Protected Area Management
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4 March 2020 12:00am
#Tech4Wildlife 2020 Photo Challenge In Review
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4 March 2020 12:00am
Call for Nominations: Tusk Conservation Awards
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3 March 2020 12:00am
Fence-Based Elephant Early Warning System
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25 February 2020 12:00am
HWC Tech Challenge Update: Thermal Elephant Alert System
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17 February 2020 12:00am
A New Cloud Platform Unveils the Most Diverse Camera Trap Database in the World
![](/sites/default/files/wocmena-_400x400-.jpg)
17 December 2019 12:00am
Mitigate Elephant-Human Conflict with ADSMO
[ARCHIVED] Upcoming Event: International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence
4 November 2019 10:54am
AI powered mobile app to save snakes
4 October 2019 7:10am
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
Trade of body parts
23 August 2019 12:16am
Tech In the Wild: Where technology meets conservation
![](/sites/default/files/2023-06/F%26F%20brand%20logo%20white%20%282%29.png)
22 August 2019 12:00am
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