The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force (HWCTF) is an interdisciplinary advisory group that aims to support professionals working on human-wildlife conflict by providing interdisciplinary guidance, resources, and capacity building. The HWCTF was established with the aim of fostering links between policy, science, and communities, and assimilating knowledge and capacity for human-wildlife conflict management across the IUCN Commissions and Members.
The HWCTF’s objectives are to: 1) act as an advisory body on matters of human-wildlife conflict that can provide a platform for the exchange of best practice; 2) facilitate interdisciplinary approaches to human-wildlife conflict mitigation by encouraging the collaboration of experts from many different fields; and 3) build capacity by developing technical or framework guidance materials, training workshops and learning platforms. To this end, the HWCTF has developed an online resource library, piloted training courses on human-wildlife conflict, is currently developing the IUCN SSC Guidelines on Human-Wildlife Conflict, and will be running a major cross-sectoral International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence in April 2020.
The HWCTF endeavours to work towards the following outcomes:
The activities of the HWCTF towards the above aims and outcomes include:
IUCN SSC Task Forces are technical advisory groups working on specific guidance, policy and other outputs, which necessarily requires a small working group able to dedicate significant amounts of their voluntary free time towards the work of the Task Force. Unlike many SSC Specialist Groups, Task Forces are small and the limited membership openings are set specifically to fill particular subject or regional expertise needs. The HWCTF is not currently taking on further members into the group while we are focussed on drafting the IUCN SSC Guidelines on Human-Wildlife Conflict and preparing the International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence in April 2020.
The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force is chaired by Dr Alexandra Zimmermann. The Programme Officer of the Task Force is Dr James Stevens. Please direct any enquiries to us at info@hwctf.org.