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
Peruvian biologist working on Andean bear conservation in the Peruvian Andes
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Wild Spy
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Forgotten Parks Foundation
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Wild Me
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Working on Human wildlife Conflict and Wildlife invasive species management
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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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Freaklabs
I'm an engineer and product designer working on wildlife conservation technology.
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Iam very passionate in environment as well as wildlife conservation
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A systems and policy specialist, currently working as the Quality & Accreditation Manager for Ceres Tag.
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BearID Project & Arm
Developing AI and IoT for wildlife
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WILDLABS
I'm the WILDLABS Research Lead at WWF-US
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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
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Article
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...
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
In the fourth installment of his case study series focusing on preventing human-wildlife conflict, Aditya Gangadharan discusses how local communities develop, test, and implement their own solutions. This article...
19 May 2020
Article
We're excited to welcome the WildTrack FIT group to our community! Today, we'd like to introduce you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT) and share how you can incorporate this tracking method into your field...
6 May 2020
The story of the California Condor Recovery Program is one of conservation's greatest success stories, an unprecedented large-scale collaborative effort to save a species from the very brink of extinction. Using...
5 May 2020
November 2022
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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 month 2 weeks 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 | 1 month 3 weeks 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 month 4 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... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 2 months 4 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 | 6 months 2 weeks 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 | 8 months 1 week 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 ago | |
Dear all, any update on this subject? All the best. |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 year 4 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 4 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 | 1 year 10 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 | 1 year 10 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 | 2 years 4 months ago |
Human-wildlife conflict one of the greatest threats to wildlife species - WWF and UNEP report
29 July 2022 at 01:27pm
International Workshop on Animal Movement Ecology & Human Mobility
22 July 2022 at 07:25pm
CERES TAG
22 July 2022 at 03:36am
Hello there
1 July 2022 at 05:00pm
Thermal cameras for monitoring visitors in highly vulnerable conservation areas
21 June 2022 at 03:44pm
22 June 2022 at 07:14am
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 at 01:41pm
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.
International Platform to exchange knowledge and experiences about solutions/initiatives on Human-Wildlife conflict issues
31 January 2022 at 11:31am
31 January 2022 at 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.
Technical Difficulties: The Death of Giants

3 November 2021 at 12:00am
EarthRanger Announces Inaugural Conservation Tech Award Recipients

3 November 2021 at 12:00am
21 June 2022 at 09:20pm
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.