In December we held our first webinar as part of a new Learning in Practice series in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. This new webinar series will provide an opportunity to link theory of principles in human-wildlife conflict management with practical experience and insights from projects on the ground. Each webinar will focus on a particular aspect of human-wildlife conflict management and provide an opportunity for in-depth discussion on lessons learned, insights, potential pitfalls, and practical advice from human-wildlife conflict practitioners and the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force. Our first webinar focused on key aspects of community engagement processes and ethics of engagement via a discussion of three case studies from Guyana, India, and Tanzania. A recording of the webinar can be viewed below.

In collaboration with the FAO, we hosted a session during the Collaborative Partnership on Sustainable Wildlife Management (CPW) Wildlife Forum on monitoring human-wildlife conflicts for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Following an introduction by Kristina Rodina, Forestry Officer for the FAO, on the work the CPW has been doing to address human-wildlife conflict, the Co-Chair for the Convention on Biological Diversity Open-Ended Working Group, Basile van Havre highlighted the current status of human-wildlife conflict in the draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and the importance of keeping the concept of human-wildlife conflict well-integrated in the framework, and identifying the right indicators and monitoring frameworks. Dr Alexandra Zimmermann, Chair of the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force highlighted the complexity of measuring a target on human-wildlife conflict and what needs to be considered when thinking about indicators, measurements and monitoring of human-wildlife conflict which were, 1) the harder aspects to measure are the intangible, qualitative aspects but the most important, 2) how to incentivise action so countries do not focus on just monitoring, 3) many stakeholders should be involved in a highly participatory, co-learning approach, 4) measuring needs to be linked to action, good practice and best advice. The session opened to contributions from speakers who highlighted how human-wildlife conflict was monitored in the context of their work and how lessons from other monitoring programmes could be applicable to human-wildlife conflict. Dr Rogerio Cunha de Paula of the National Research Center for Carnivores Conservation explained how projects working to address human-wildlife conflict are monitored in Brazil, outlining some of the challenges of the process. Thea Carroll, MIKE Programme Coordinator for the CITES Secretariat provided insights from establishing and coordinating the implementation of the CITES MIKE Programme that monitors the illegal killing of elephants, across 45 range states for African and Asian elephants and highlighting lessons that can be applied to monitoring human-wildlife conflict. Dr Simon Pooley of Birkbeck University of London explained how crocodile attacks were being recorded on a global scale but noted that although impacts are often easiest to measure, the ease should not obscure the complexities of conflict. Dr Diogo Veríssimo from On the Edge Conservation offered potentially new sources of data that might become available to measure such complex topics as technology advances and we move into a more digital world. The presentations were followed by a Q&A session with the audience to further discuss the complexity of measuring human-wildlife conflict. If you were unable to join the session, you can find a summary here or watch the recording of the session below.

The Chair, Programme Officer and several members of the Task Force attended the IUCN World Conservation Congress held in Marseille, France in September 2021. Following the approval of IUCN Resolution (WCC 2020 Res 101) on Addressing Human-Wildlife Conflict, by 99% in 2020, attendance at the congress provided a great opportunity to discuss human-wildlife conflict with a diverse range of stakeholders attending both in-person and virtually. The group supported several activities focussed on the topic of human-wildlife conflict and held a press conference on addressing the global challenge of human-wildlife conflict to discuss what action is needed to achieve human-wildlife coexistence, and how IUCN is convening efforts for improving knowledge and practice to this aim. We had an excellent turnout to the event and a recording for it can be found in English, French and Spanish here.

We are pleased to share our new IUCN SSC Position Statement on the Management of Human-Wildlife Conflict. This position statement summarises the most important aspects of understanding and addressing human-wildlife conflicts. The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force urges governments, non-governmental organizations, researchers, practitioners, community leaders, environmental agencies and others to ensure that efforts to manage human-wildlife conflicts are pursued through well-informed, holistic, and collaborative processes that take into account underlying social, cultural and economic contexts. Available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese on the Task Force’s new publications page here.

IUCN Congress Newsletter (original blog post) The conservation of biodiversity is unfortunately all too often about managing conflicts. Tensions arise from access to land, competition for resources, which in turn are exacerbated by disputes over managing wildlife, protected areas, struggles over inequalities, livelihoods, development, and human rights. Conflicts in biodiversity conservation take many shapes and forms and include those that involve direct negative encounters between wildlife and people. Often referred to as human-wildlife conflicts, this particular type of conflict is becoming much more frequent, serious and widespread and a global concern for conservation and local sustainable livelihoods and development. To enable nature-friendly agriculture and ensure food security alongside biodiversity conservation, we have to take a close look at how communities can live sustainably alongside wildlife. This is particularly important for the 500 million smallholder farmers around the world who rely heavily or entirely on small-scale agriculture for their economic subsistence. Although a great number of species are involved in such human-wildlife conflict, including many of the large, iconic ones such as elephants, large cats, bears and sharks, which require large areas and often cannot survive only inside protected areas. A greater focus is needed on developing ways to coexist with these and many other species outside of protected areas, a critical part of visions for a 30x30 conservation area goal. This challenge is further amplified by climate change, and likely to affect human-wildlife conflict in at least three ways: changes in species range patterns, changes in human land use, and the unpredictability of climate events. First, species ranges are changing as wildlife is forced to adapt to changes in their environment. For example, as sea ice shrinks due to warming ocean temperatures, polar bears are forced to expand their search for prey and venture closer to human settlements, often resulting in clashes with subarctic communities. Meanwhile in Chile, guanacos have been moving from their mountain habitat to lower altitudes for better grazing conditions, where they find themselves competing with livestock and triggering demands to cull guanacos. In marine environments too sharks and other marine predators may shift their ranges with warming sea temperatures, potentially creating new hotspots of conflicts with fishermen and swimmers. Second, land use and food production systems are changing as people adapt to climatic changes in their environments. Droughts and floods are pressuring farmers in many parts of the world to shift from agriculture to livestock. Yet this brings with it a host of new challenges, as raising livestock anywhere in the vicinity of carnivores or other predators inevitably increases the risk of predation and in turn retaliation, exacerbating the already amplified pressures on local farmers, as has become increasingly the case with Andean bears and pumas in Bolivia. Third, with the increased unpredictability of climatic effects, unusual patterns can emerge in the behaviours or population dynamics of species. On the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, an unusual lack of cyclones in the region has allowed the endemic and Endangered Mauritius fruit bat to increase in numbers, leading to an increase in crop-raiding of fruit orchards and an escalation of conflict over the fate of the bats. In Kenya, severe rainfall resulted in Lake Naivasha swelling to its largest size in nearly a century, flooding fields and leading hippos too close to villages and farmers, with dangerous encounters as the result. Meanwhile, farmers in Sikkim are at a breaking point of trying to coexist with increasingly frequent visits from wild boar and other species, which appear to be pressured into agricultural areas in search of food. Human-wildlife conflict mitigation has been a crisis-management field to date, and much is still being learned about processes and approaches to resolve these issues. Preventing emerging conflicts before they escalate, however, is equally important and is brought into sharp focus by the exacerbating effects of climate change. Where wildlife populations recover and species increase their number and expand their ranges, human-wildlife conflict very often follows. Tiger numbers in Chitwan National Park in Nepal have more than doubled – a wonderful conservation success in the eyes of some, and a disaster for others, local communities who risk their lives relying on non-timber forest products from adjacent areas. Similarly China’s small population of elephants has been growing and expanding its range in recent years, moving across populated areas and increasingly encountering people and their very tempting crop fields. And so, the day-to-day local social costs of biodiversity conservation may outweigh its long-term benefits, making tolerance of potentially dangerous wildlife a tall order for many people. What needs to happen for communities to be able to coexist alongside wildlife? We need to factor biodiversity conflict resolution into climate change adaptation. We need to invest in conflict resolution skills and become better at proactively anticipating and preventing these conflicts from escalating. As climate change puts further pressure on communities and farmers, adding fuel to underlying social tensions around inequality and poverty, repeated negative impacts from living near protected areas or wildlife undermines a willingness to support conservation efforts, so de-risking the costs of living near wildlife is essential. We can apply many of the principles of climate adaptation to managing conflicts over wildlife. As outlined by the IUCN SSC Position Statement on Human-Wildlife Conflict, these situations need to be managed using well-informed, holistic, and collaborative processes that take into account underlying social, cultural and economic contexts, as stated also in the IUCN World Conservation Congress Resolution to addressing human-wildlife conflict (WCC 2020 Res 101). Conflicts over biodiversity present not only a challenge, but also an opportunity for communities, governments and organisations to contribute the CBD 2050 Vision of “Living in harmony with nature” and its Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework which envisages a world in which environmental conflicts are much reduced. For further resources about managing human-wildlife conflict and achieving coexistence please visit the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force online library at www.hwctf.org

Our new document library is now live and can be found on the Library tab of the website. In the document library, you will find some of the key literature on many human-wildlife conflict topics and species. This is not an exhaustive list of documents but has been put together by Task Force members to include some of the important literature members think practitioners should read when working on human-wildlife conflict. From conflict analysis to social marketing to fencing, it includes guidance documents, papers and links to useful sites. If the document is open access then it can be downloaded from the website otherwise there will be a link to its source. If you do not have access to the paper or journal we are unfortunately not able to send you the document. The author of the document should be contacted. The library will be updated with relevant literature regularly. If you think we’ve missed anything, please let us know at info@hwctf.org. Thanks for visiting!

Considering ongoing uncertainties, we have postponed the International Conference on Human-wildlife Conflict and Coexistence to early next year. Depending on further developments of the global coronavirus situation, we hope to be able to hold the conference on Monday 28 – Wednesday 30 March 2022, with short courses to follow on Thursday 31st March and Friday 1st April. We will confirm the format of the conference nearer the time and hope to be able to make some components available both in-person and virtually. This will depend largely on the extent to which international travel is possible. Further information about the conference, and all news as it develops, can be found on the conference website. We have provided some updated FAQs below and you can also contact us and find updates via our Newsletter, Twitter and Facebook pages.

The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force is pleased to announce an International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence, to be held at Oxford University on 1-3 April 2020. The conference is co-hosted by the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force, the World Bank Global Wildlife Program, and the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University's Department of Zoology, along with several further collaborating organisations. We aim to bring together researchers, community leaders, government representatives and participants from various sectors from around the world. The programme will include presentations and many interactive sessions and discussions, and opportunities to network with people from a range of fields and backgrounds. Further information can be found at www.hwctf.org/conference. Updates about calls for registration, symposia, workshops, abstracts, and travel grants will follow over the coming months.

Our online library has been live for 1 year! The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force online library provides the most up-to-date literature on key topics in human-wildlife conflict and interactions, with over 900 selected papers, guides and other publications and resources, currently used by people from 140 countries. Over the last year resources have been added for many human-wildlife conflict topics including social research methods, human dimensions theory, political ecology of conflicts and translocation. Human-wildlife conflict publications specific to primates, lynx, wolf, leopard, cheetah and raptors have been added. The document library is regularly updated with relevant key literature and guidance. Visit the library here. Follow the Task Force's Twitter @hwctf and Facebook page for regular updates!

The Task Force held its 3rd annual meeting on the 12-13th September 2018, at Trinity College, Oxford University. It was attended by 16 Task Force members with funding provided from the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi to cover half of the cost of the participants’ travels to the meeting. The aim of the meeting was to discuss and work on the progress of the group’s objectives and activities. One of the outputs of the Task Force is to produce brief guides on different topics in human-wildlife conflict that are targeted primarily at conservation practitioners, government officers, PhD students, and similar. These guides are planned to be 4-6 pages long, available as PDFs on our website and in print.

On 25-26 April 2017, members of the Task Force met in Oxford, UK, for a two-day meeting. The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss and develop some of the outputs of the Task Force. One of the main roles of the group is to provide interdisciplinary guidance to support the IUCN SSC network and other practitioners in addressing human-wildlife conflict. During our first meeting, back in2016, we discussed three key questions with the aim of helping to structure what the task force should achieve. These were: 1. What does the world need to tackle human-wildlife conflict? 2. What meaningful and substantial contribution will the task force make? 3. How will we go about doing this? The Task Force members felt there were three keys topics that needed to be addressed. Firstly, understanding what a given conflict is about and the complexities of conflict. Secondly, knowing what is needed for mitigation of a given conflict including having a better understanding of the principles and processes of conflict mitigation and management. Finally, having the skills, capacity, and resources to act in the right way, ensuring that conflict is being dealt with in an effective way. One of the ways the Task Force will contribute to address these needs is through the production of short guidance documents on several different key topics of human-wildlife conflict. During our meeting members discussed topics to cover. These included: engaging with stakeholders, assessing and measuring the impact of a conflict, different roles in conflict and conflict analysis. The Task Force will be publishing these documents over the course of the next IUCN quadrennium (2017-2020) to assist practitioners in reducing human-wildlife conflict. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on when we produce these documents.