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
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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WILDLABS
This account is managed by the WILDLABS Team. Tag us or DM whenever you need help from our community team.
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Early-career movement ecologist currently working with an interdisciplinary team to develop and deploy animal-borne tracking devices with the interest of monitoring and studying the fine-scale behaviors of large carnivores, particularly in the context of human wildlife conflict
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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
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- 15 Groups
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- 5 Groups
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- 14 Groups
- @Merin_Joji1297
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Curently doing PhD at the University of Copenhagen on Effects of Shell asymmetry in Indian freshwater turtles using Geomteric morphometrics.
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- 4 Groups
Technologist, birder, photographer and mountain guide.
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- 18 Groups
- @vandita_shukla
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PhD candidate studying drone flight planning for enabling tracking and identification of individual characteristics of wildlife; member of the WildDrone, an MSCA Doctoral Network funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research
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- 20 Groups
Movement Ecologist studying the where, why, and how animals move throughout our world. Current work is investigating the movement and energetics of large neotropical bats in a changing environment with ephemeral resources.
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- 23 Discussions
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- @tom_august
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Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement
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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...
3 March 2020
Technology is rapidly changing the way communities monitor wildlife movement and prevent or mitigate human-wildlife conflict. This case study from Appiko delves into field testing of the open source sensor warning...
25 February 2020
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...
17 February 2020
Fueled by Artificial Intelligence, Wildlife Insights provides access to over 4.5 million camera trap records.
17 December 2019
The International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP), a coalition of World Wildlife Fund and Fauna & Flora International, has teamed up with Inmarsat, the world’s leading mobile satellite communications company,...
23 July 2019
It is common knowledge that the illegal trade in tiger bones and body parts poses a grave threat to the remaining populations of Asia’s most iconic big cat. But this grisly business also has a detrimental impact on...
31 May 2019
Ol Pejeta Conservancy partners with conservation and technology organisations to kick-start a research and innovation centre for wildlife conservation
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...
14 January 2019
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...
9 January 2019
October 2024
November 2023
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15 Products
2 R&D Projects
27 Organisations
Recently updated products
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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@richardturere Hello :) and a warm welcome to WILDLABS! Here is the link to @Lekato Samuel Lekato - Founder and Chairman, Enduata Emaa CBO. Sam is interested in conservation... |
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Citizen Science, Climate Change, Community Base, Connectivity, Conservation Tech Training and Education, East Africa Community, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 9 months 3 weeks ago | |
Super, nice to hear. BTW, this project appears new, but it's been in operation b yseveral parties for more than 10 years, so it's mature.No one is playing with it yet as I only... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 10 months ago | |
Hi all! I am a mechanical engineer working in the Aerospace Engineering department at a University, and I have the opportunity to take over... |
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Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 10 months 2 weeks ago | |
Thank you |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 10 months 4 weeks ago | |
What's the definition of low cost really? Using various cnn models for objection detection the results can be very accurate. The costs would vary. The cheapest Jetson Nano (Old... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 11 months ago | |
Hi everybody 👋🏽,I'm a UX designer, and I design interfaces and improve user experiences/flows. I would love to contribute to conservation... |
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AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 year ago | |
Hi everyone,I'm new here :)I'm doing my thesis of biology bachelor about Rhino poaching. I wanted to ask here if yu have some articles... |
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AI for Conservation, Ending Wildlife Trafficking Online, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 1 year 1 month ago | |
Hi Andrea! Although I am a keen user and observer of the Moveapps initiative, my R or Python coding skills are next to non- existing. I am therefore not likely to be contributing... |
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Biologging, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 2 months ago | |
I just came across this interesting paper in which seismic monotoring of animals like elephants was mentioned. This is the study refered to:Cheers,Lars |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Emerging Tech, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Remote Sensing & GIS, Sensors | 1 year 5 months ago | |
Hi everyone, I'm new here! I'm a UX designer and researcher, and an animal lover. Excited to be part of Conservation Tech here at WildLabs... |
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AI for Conservation, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Software and Mobile Apps, Wildlife Crime | 1 year 10 months ago | |
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... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 year 11 months ago | |
Why this collaboration platform? What entails to become ENCOSH member? Tackling human-wildlife coexistence issues requires an holistic approach with various initiatives/... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 2 years 3 months ago |
Webinar: IIED Community-Based Approaches to Tackling Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade
17 March 2020 12:00am
Testing an Early Warning System to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict on the Bhutan-India Border
11 March 2020 12:00am
3 Ways Your Conservation Technology Could Become a Shiny Pile of Junk, and How to Avoid It
9 March 2020 12:00am
Accepting Applications: ArcGIS Solutions for Protected Area Management
4 March 2020 12:00am
#Tech4Wildlife 2020 Photo Challenge In Review
4 March 2020 12:00am
Call for Nominations: Tusk Conservation Awards
3 March 2020 12:00am
Fence-Based Elephant Early Warning System
25 February 2020 12:00am
HWC Tech Challenge Update: Thermal Elephant Alert System
17 February 2020 12:00am
A New Cloud Platform Unveils the Most Diverse Camera Trap Database in the World
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
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
22 August 2019 12:00am
Conservation and Technology Conference
29 July 2019 12:00am
New technology trialled to better monitor human-gorilla conflict in Uganda
23 July 2019 12:00am
Makerspaces to empower communities to develop/refine their own solutions to HEC
27 May 2019 8:27am
28 May 2019 11:37pm
3 June 2019 3:31pm
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
Caught in the crossfire – Tapirs in tiger territory
31 May 2019 12:00am
Technology lab focused on wildlife protection opens on Ol Pejeta Conservancy
31 May 2019 12:00am
HWC Tech Challenge: Smart Parks field update
25 March 2019 12:00am
Tech for Rewilding Conflicts
22 November 2018 10:54am
13 March 2019 12:34pm
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!
Arribada Initiative Update: Testing our prototype thermal cameras with elephants in India
1 March 2019 12:00am
Nominations for the 2019 Tusk Conservation Awards Now Open
12 February 2019 12:00am
Foxlight to deter pumas, but how about Andean foxes?
14 January 2019 3:24pm
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.
Mobile phones to reduce HWC
8 February 2019 2:31pm
Citizen scientists to analyze HWC interventions
16 January 2019 3:11pm
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
HWC Tech Challenge Update: Testing our prototype thermal cameras in the Arctic
9 January 2019 12:00am
31 March 2023 1:24pm
Wild pigs crop damage assessment and movement using GIS and drones
28 December 2018 5:15am
3 January 2019 9:57am
Dear Sdorji,
Thanks for sharing! Are you specifically looking for monitoring methods? In that case, you could probably also find relevant information outside of the HWC group, perhaps in groups focussing on camera trapping, the use of drones etc on the other WILDLABS pages. Do you know about the Bhutanese national HWC strategy? Does this also focus on wild boars? Or is your initiative not connected to that?
Best regards,
Femke
5 January 2019 8:24am
Dear Femke,
I am actually looking for studying the crop damages using drones and also tracking the movements, may be using GPS collars. But I do not actually know about these tools and have not used. So just thought if I can get methods and procedures. It is great that you already know about our national strategy. Yes, I am the core member of Bhutanese national HWC strategy and we have recently completed drafting. I have worked on wild pigs chapter and one strategy there is crop damage assessments and movements study. We are also proposing crop insurance but without a concrete data, there is nothing we can do about crop insurance. So I am thinking to collect basic information such as crop damages and movements of wild pigs.
Locally fabricated electric/solar fencing widely spreading in Bhutan
28 December 2018 5:57am
3 January 2019 9:57am
Dear Sdorji,
Thanks for sharing and your request for suppport from this group! I was thinking that perhaps @Mohan+Raj could share with you some insights from India? He has also developed fences and is involved in the technologies to improve monitoring and maintanance.
Best regards,
Femke
5 January 2019 8:18am
Dear Femke,
Thank you for your email. I hope I can hear from Mohan Raj. Electric fencing is one area where it can play very important role in human wildlife conflict management. In Bhutan, there are now about 3636 km and we are already experiencing some issues such as sustainability, wooden poles, nelgect during off-season, etc. I hope we can learn from each other and see areas for collaboration.
Thanks.
Sangay
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