Dates: 2010-2012

Human Wildlife Conflict (HWC) exists when the needs and behaviour of wildlife impact negatively on the goals of human beings. It tends to manifest itself in scenarios where human strategies affect free movement of wild animals and vice versa. Thus, HWC can be considered inevitable in all communities where human and wildlife coexist and share the same habitat.

Even with low game density, HWC has a significant social and economic impact on communities living at the edge of Protected Areas and it is inevitable that HWC on the one side will increase with the free movement and growing populations of wildlife species in Southern Africa while on the other, the increasing demand for land for agriculture. This is even most evident in respect to elephant populations that have the ability to double in numbers within 15 years. If this situation is not addressed, so that humans and wildlife coexist, wildlife as a natural resource will be condemned to survive only in fenced protected areas. In an attempt to improve the situation, we suggest an approach based on three pillars:

1. Appreciating the wildlife-domestic interface demands the knowledge of how wildlife move and utilize their home range in comparison to the use of this land for agriculture and wildlife perception by communities living there. Records of HWC activity documented using simple technology such as SMS will help to monitor this interface while determining the dynamics and magnitude of the problem.

2. Minimizing the negative impact of wildlife has to be based on the understanding of animal behaviour.The dissemination and utilisation of the HWC toolkit in its different versions will help communities to be more sympathetic and adopt less riskless attitude when confronting dangerous animals. Also it enables target intervention of specific problem animals through the concept of ‘memory fences’ to facilitate wild animals respecting human activities and settlement (e.g. discipline of crop raiding elephant employing chilli pepper).

3. Improving community tolerance toward wildlife must start by capacitating the local communities to protect themselves. Building on existing traditional approaches through the HWC toolkit will promote a range of applicable solutions adaptable to their situation. Promoting and improving wildlife based-revenue ventures are considered essential to provide for long term mitigation and human-wildlife coexistence.