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Human-Wildlife Conflict / Feed

Human-wildlife conflict is a significant challenge that only grows as habitats shrink and other issues like climate change alter the natural world. Technologies like biologging gear have become essential for proactively addressing human-wildlife conflict before it escalates, and tech projects that seek to understand population ranges and behaviour can help people learn to live with wildlife as part of our own environments. If you're interested in using technology to prevent human-wildlife conflict, this group is the place for you!

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How 400km solar-powered fence reduces human-wildlife conflict - The Standard

Esther Githinji

31 October 2023 7:35am

An electric, solar-powered fence erected by the Rhino Ark Charitable Trust partnering with the Kenya Wildlife Service completed in 2009 evolved into the longest conservation barrier that safeguards vital forests in the Aberdare Conservation Area fostering peaceful coexistence.

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https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/rift-valley/article/2001484346/how-400km-solar-powered-fence-reduces-human-wildlife-conflict
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Seismic detectors

Nilanga Jayasinghe

20 December 2015 1:10pm

Hello community, Is anyone familiar with, or using, seismic detection technology to prevent HWC? At WWF, we have been looking into the possibility of using devices with seismic...

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Nilanga Jayasinghe

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

Antoine Ede

30 March 2021 6:01pm

Dear all, any update on this subject?

 

All the best.

Nilaksha Rathnayake

29 October 2023 6:39pm

Hi Antoine, 
Sorry about the late reply. The field trials were abandoned mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We're planning to improve our prototype and conduct field trials in this December. I'll post an update here. 
regards

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Horizon call for EU Human-Wildlife conflict experts

David Blažević

23 October 2023 10:34am

Hi, I represent a consortium (CRO/FI/DE) which plans to apply to the call in the link: HORIZON-CL6-2024-FARM2FORK-01-1 Agro-pastoral/outdoor livestock systems and wildlife management If you have a research idea in the scope of this call please do not hesitate to...

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Restoring the Mara Elephant Population Using Coexistence Tech Solutions with Mara Elephant Project's Wilson Sairowua

Esther Githinji

20 October 2023 1:31pm

Listen in on our interview with Mara Elephant Project’s Tracking Manager, Wilson Sairowua, as he explains how MEP is using software, geofencing and drone technologies to resolve human-elephant conflict across Maasai...

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Frank van der Most

27 May 2024 3:54pm

Super interesting interview! I especially liked the last minutes where Wilson Sairowua explains about the experimental farm to see which crops elephants like and dislike. Just...
Esther Githinji

28 May 2024 8:12am

Great suggestion @Frank_van_der_Most ! It's really interesting to see conservation tech interacting with other forms of environmental tech. There is definitely room for effective...
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discussion

What Biologgers are you using?

Holly Cormack

30 August 2023 10:44am

Hello biologging community!My name is Holly Cormack and I’m the new Conservation Technology Intern in the WILDLABS team. We are researching what different...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

7 September 2023 10:57am

Interesting. interesting. I'm probably jumping the gun here but I'm curious - are you getting any trends on types of biologgers or specific manufacturers people are talking about? Or is everyone using different tags/manufacturers? 

Stephanie O'Donnell

7 September 2023 11:00am

Ah! It's great to find out about your tags - great video, thanks for sharing. We'd love to hear from some of your users about their experiences with your tags! Would you be able to share the poll with your user community? 

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In case you missed it... (no. 1)

Stephanie O'Donnell

12 September 2023 11:49am

Five #tech4wildlife people, projects and updates that caught our attention this month. An AI supported bear early warning system, a project that's connecting indigenous communities with high speed internet, exploring...

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Lars Holst Hansen

13 September 2023 6:23am

Hi Steph! Nice with this "sporadic series"! The bear alarm in China reminds me of the Bear Repeller by the Hack the Planet guys:/Lars
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Alibaba Cloud's Geo Fencing System in the Mara

Esther Githinji

1 September 2023 12:27pm

Wilson Sairowua, Tracking Manager at Mara Elephant Project (MEP) narrates how tech4change, Alibaba Cloud's Geo Fencing System paired with collaring has helped to mitigate human-elephant conflict across Maasai Mara and has facilitated a 72% increase in elephants in the Mara...

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Born Free Uses Smart Maps to Save Lions, Solve Human-Wildlife Conflict

Esther Githinji

17 August 2023 2:35pm

Location intelligence helps Born Free Kenya understand where communities and lions are in conflict. Outreach to fortify cattle corrals is guided by smart maps and spatial analysis.

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Human-Elephant Conflict Tech Solution in Tsavo: NdovuCare

Esther Githinji and 1 more

7 August 2023 1:36pm

Read our interview with Sandra Maryanne, a young conservation tech innovator raised in Taita, Ivarenyi with first-hand experience on the challenges of human-elephant conflict within her community. To address this, she...

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CathyNj

30 April 2024 12:48am

Persistence. Watching from where she started and that she is still at it despite the challenges is inspiring. I will visit her soon to see first hand how Ndovu care operates. 
Esther Githinji

15 May 2024 9:34am

Hello @Sandra254 :) Ndovu Care is perfect to feature in the Product section of The Inventory - I've gone ahead and created a new...
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discussion

Interested in being part of the Enduata Emaa CBO's Green Planet Ambassadors Project in Amboseli? 

Esther Githinji

5 July 2023 10:28am

About the Enduata Emaa Community Based OrganizationEnduata Emaa Community-based Organization was founded in 2021 by its Chairman Samuel...

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Esther Githinji

25 July 2023 1:14pm

@richardturere Hello :) and a warm welcome to WILDLABS! Here is the link to @Lekato Samuel Lekato - Founder and Chairman, Enduata Emaa CBO. Sam is interested in conservation technology focused on how to keep wild animals away from community homesteads in Amboseli and I reckon your Lion Lights could help. I'll let you two take on the conversation from here. Thanks! 

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discussion

Human/animal detection/alerting

Kim Hendrikse

20 June 2023 12:07pm

Hi all, I've just discovered this site. I have an open source project that would be ideally suited for helping in human/wildlife conflict situations. The project is actually an...

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Lars Holst Hansen

30 June 2023 12:53pm

Hi Kim! 

Welcome to Wildlabs!

This looks like an amazing project! I see multiple uses for our ecosystem monitoring in Greenland - both for the research/monitoring part but also for safety - polar bears roaming around camp!

I will look into your github and may get back to you!

Cheers,

Lars 

Kim Hendrikse

21 July 2023 9:57am

Super, nice to hear. BTW, this project appears new, but it's been in operation b yseveral parties for more than 10 years, so it's mature.

No one is playing with it yet as I only just released it to open source last year. However, it was evolved since 2008 and the main state machine was almost the same as it is now in 2011. I added the the AI computer vision in 2019.

I believe it has a lot of features that make it practical to use, particularly as I'm using the best available object detectors for example, but also they way I make the state control very flexible. Just waiting for some people to try it :)

BTW, I've been adding support for the latest Orin Jetson series SBCs but still have to come back to finishing this release off. I've been somewhat distracted with my audio localization project which I want to finish to the point of releasing and and writing it up before finishing the Jetson Orin release of the security project.

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discussion

Automated Elephant-detection system

Neil Sheridan

27 October 2016 10:14pm

Hi everyone, I thought I would introduce my automated elephant-detection system, that I have been working on over the summer for the hackaday prize. It was a finalist in...

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rakeshkalva

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

Juliana Masseloux

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 juliana.masseloux@zsl.org or reply to this message.

Cheers,

Juliana

Kim Hendrikse

20 June 2023 1:32pm

What's the definition of low cost really? Using various cnn models for objection detection the results can be very accurate. The costs would vary. The cheapest Jetson Nano (Old model) is about 150 euros but case, SSD and camera and it can run yolov4 full model, 416x416 image size.

However, if you go the next step, the jetson Nano orin, then you start about 500-700 euros for the board, but the model can run a full size yolov6 model which is extremely good. Elephants are so unique looking, you could likely eliminate all false positives.

You would need to attach cellular modems or something like that I expect but these sound like a different thing to a cellular camera system that you mention and thus likely a lot cheaper.

The Jetson SBC's do use quite a lot of power.

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