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
Wildlife Entrepreneur | Innovation for Nature Conservation | Systems-thinking | Web3.0 | DAOs | Rewilding & more
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Wildlife Biologist and Marine Conservationist
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Passionate and curious about nature and its diversity, I seek to learn more about conservation, new technologies, and the unknown and infinite environmental world.
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Wildlife Drones
Wildlife Drones has developed the world’s most innovative radio animal-tracking system using drones so you can track your radio-tagged animals like never before.
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Data Scientist
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PhD student-passive acoustic monitoring with lemurs in Madagascar; Science Outreach Coordinator-Rainforest Connection (RFCx)
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30+ years of experience working in biodiversity conservation worldwide, laregely focused on forests, rewilding and conservation technology
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Leveraging big data to solve hard, open ended and socially impactful problems| Ex - Palantir
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I am an interdisciplinary scientist with robust experience in natural resource utilization, coexistence, conflict analysis and management, peacebuilding and mediation, wildlife farming and conservation, and dryland and rangeland management.
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I am currently a student studying Wildlife and Ecotourism Management in University of Ìbàdàn, Nigeria, I'm a front-end developer. I am interested in conservation technology
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Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB), Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Behavioral Ecologist
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Consultancy opportunity at ZSL for an experienced monitoring specialist to support species monitoring in rewilding landscapes across Europe
31 January 2023
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New: Satellites for Biodiversity Award
EmmaOldham
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5 December 2022
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This position (at California State University, Long Beach) provides data management & analysis support to Shark Lab research operations including shark tagging, active tracking, receiver data, AUV & UAV data...
24 October 2022
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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
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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
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An update on Ceres Tags products that are being used in conservation
22 August 2022
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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
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Ceres Tag sends just in time alerts and GPS location to have the power to track and trace.
22 July 2022
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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
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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...
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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...
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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 month 3 weeks 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 | 7 months ago | |
At Ol Pejeta, through the Kifaru Rising project, we have 19 FLIR thermal cameras that we use to address poaching as a conservation challenge.The cameras have been deployed along a... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict, Camera Traps, Sensors | 7 months 1 week 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 | 7 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hi Neil,I am a project manager for Zoological Society of London's Thailand Programme. We work in the southern Western Forest Complex of Thailand, which is a large landscape of... |
+25
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 8 months 2 weeks 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 | 1 year ago | |
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 | 1 year 2 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 | 1 year 5 months ago | |
Dear all, any update on this subject? All the best. |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 year 10 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 | 1 year 10 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 | 2 years 4 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 | 2 years 4 months ago |
Consultancy opportunity: Wildlife monitoring specialist
31 January 2023 11:26am
AI for Forest Elephants Challenge
25 January 2023 3:34pm
Western Section of The Wildlife Society 2023
25 January 2023 2:09am
International Congress for Conservation Biology
16 January 2023 2:53pm
Help - Innovative ways to track elephant movement
28 October 2022 4:50pm
7 November 2022 12:52am
Hi Tyler,
Would like to introduce you to Ceres Tags products
- Ceres Tags products come in boxes of 5, 10 and 24.
- There are some software partners such as Earthranger, Mapipedia and possibly CiboLabs that would be able to assist you with your mapping vegetation requirements
- Ceres Tag does not require any towers, base stations and infrastructure. This allows you to see any movements from the heard outside of their normal herd (boundary alerts), and you will not be disturbing any of the flora and fauna with infrastructure set up.
- For the timing you are looking at, Ceres Wild pings directly to satellite 24 times a day. For Ceres Trace and Ceres Ranch there are 4 within 24 hours. Taking into consideration, when you set up alert areas, you will get them directly to your phone/laptop via your software of choice
- Ceres Ranch is a reusable tag that has just been launched. Use it on this project, remove the tag and then use the tag on your next project
- The software you choose will assist with the history of your animal movements. Ceres Tag is integrated with 11 software partners and in-development with 18 software partners https://cerestag.com/pages/software-partners
- Understanding it is a short-term project, you would be able to use Ceres Tags products without the additional expense of setting up and removing infrastructure- towers, gateways
- With Ceres Tag, you are purchasing the box of tags and picking a suitable software to deliver the information you require. On average, a box of 10 Ceres Trace Tags, is the same as 1 LoRaWAN tower.
14 December 2022 10:49am
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
New: Satellites for Biodiversity Award
5 December 2022 2:08pm
Shark Lab Data Analyst
24 October 2022 7:12pm
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
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30 August 2022 1:28pm
Online Hackathon: Predators conservation in the Maasai Mara
22 August 2022 10:32am
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
29 September 2022 4:05am
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
Thermal cameras for monitoring visitors in highly vulnerable conservation areas
21 June 2022 3:44pm
21 June 2022 9:20pm
You should talk with the folks at Arribada Initiative, like @Alasdair, as they've used thermal cameras to automatically detect polar bears & alert local response teams (to avoid human-wildlife conflict). The folks at ConservationAI are also doing similar work. RESOLVE also has the Trailguard system
Most of the geofencing projects I know of are working with tags rather than cameras (e.g., LionShield, Save the Elephants) but it sounds like that wouldn't be as relevant for your needs.
The Conservation Tech Directory may have other examples as well.
22 June 2022 7:14am
Thanks! Actually a major concern is wether thermal cameras could substitute the use of eco-counters, and therefore save money and reduce complexity in data analysis.
I will contact them.
23 June 2022 1:41pm
At Ol Pejeta, through the Kifaru Rising project, we have 19 FLIR thermal cameras that we use to address poaching as a conservation challenge.
The cameras have been deployed along a key fence line and are monitored 24/7 by a dedicated team.
The cameras have inbuilt analytics capabilities which allow us to design virtual fences/boundaries.
An Alert is generated whenever a human or vehicles crosses the virtual fence. Following an alert, appropriate ranger action is undertaken depending on the video content recorded with each alert.
I think the Alert feature available with these cameras could be leveraged to monitor the wildlife visitor interaction, seeing as a video clip is recorded with each alert, the thermal video clips could be reviewed to assess the wildlife-human interaction effects.
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
Automated Elephant-detection system
27 October 2016 10:14pm
16 September 2017 8:17pm
I did think of using thermal imaging cameras like FLIR systems ones - but they are just too expensive! I'm trying to get the detection devices for <$150 really. Also, since they are so expensive, people would probably go ahead and steal them :-(
I wasn't sure about power. I'm currently trying with a lead acid battery (12v, 7Ah). I can charge that with solar panels, and it'll last quite a while longer than a Lithium Ion Polymer 2000mAh! + I needed 12v for the IR illuminators anyway + can step it down for the raspberry pi to 5v . The power management is prob the thing giving me the most headache since I've not much experience with that!
12 June 2020 5:53am
Hi,
This is rakesh kalva from India. I have been working on human-elephant conflict in the state of Andhra Pradesh for the past 5 years. This is a cool idea. I have used camera traps to identify movement and individual elephants for demographic data.
Some field based observations of using camera traps for elephants:
1. I usually place the camera traps on forest paths and many of the images we captured wernt of the complete elephant. Its just the legs and trunk. Wont that effect the detection by the software as to wether its an elephant or not?
2. In case of flash cameras , quite a lot of our cameras got damaged by elephants. So we were going for IR cameras. WIll it work for IR cameras as well?
3. Another issue is with the cameras being stolen by locals or poachers.
4. So we gave up all this and are using a simple trip technology with a switch attached to a door bell attached to a rope placed at a height of 7-8 feet. In this landscape no other animal is at this heigh so when the alarm is triggered we know its an elephant.
5. Elephants operate in a large territor, so will it be feasable to use this technology?
But there are some interesting research questions that can be answered with this technology you are developing. Kindly let me know if i can be of any help on field.
Regards,
Rakesh Kalva
Wildlife Biologist
18 May 2022 3:48am
Hi Neil,
I am a project manager for Zoological Society of London's Thailand Programme. We work in the southern Western Forest Complex of Thailand, which is a large landscape of relatively contiguous forest surrounded by development and agriculture and thus rife with human-elephant conflict. We are currently looking to co-develop or pilot low-cost cameras or acoustic sensors for real-time detection of elephants at HEC hotspots within the landscape. Current issues we've been facing are high rates of non-target stimuli triggers which clog up the cloud (so the automated classification of elephants would be useful to limit notifications) and the high cost of conventional cellular camera systems. I am curious to know the current status of your Elephant AI system. The most recent update I've found on your hackaday is of the combination with a deterrence system, which is very promising. Feel free to email me at [email protected] or reply to this message.
Cheers,
Juliana
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
Seismic detectors
20 December 2015 1:10pm
31 August 2018 10:10am
@NJayasinghe @Teun Good news folks - my proposal on geophone based IoT network to detect Elephant movements got selected as one of the 20 finalist for the ConX Tech Challenge.
We're going to start developing our first prototype and looking forward to some exciting stuff ahead. Our plan is to explore the posibilities of using sensors like geophone, Accelerometers etc on detecting movements of elephants near villages.
Please visit our project page for more details - https://conservationx.com/project/id/159/elesenseiotnetworkforhec
Thanks a lot for your support!
Nilaksha
31 August 2018 2:51pm
Hi Nilaksha,
Congratulations! That is great news! Please do keep us posted on how it goes and do let us know if you need varied field sites in which to test the tools. @Teun , how's your prototype coming along?
Best,
Nilanga
30 March 2021 6:01pm
Dear all, any update on this subject?
All the best.
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
4 November 2022 5:24pm
Why would you want to avoid alerting the rangers ?
You don't need high tech for this; elephants leave very obvious tracks and sign.