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Human and Wildlife Conflicts

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https://hdl.handle.net/10217/100289
This digital collection includes presentations given at the 8th International Wildlife Ranching Symposium held in 2014 for the symposium theme: Human and Wildlife Conflicts.

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Browsing Human and Wildlife Conflicts by Author "Le Bel, Sébastien, speaker"

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    An innovative chili dispenser to establish memory fence dynamics at crop-wildlife interfaces for effective long term human-elephant conflict mitigation
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014-09) La Grange, Mike, speaker; Le Bel, Sébastien, speaker; Breck, Stewart, moderator; International Wildlife Ranching Symposium, producer
    With elephant populations in southern Africa increasing at 5% per annum, local communities living in marginal land adjacent to protected areas are faced with increasing occurrences of human-elephant conflict. If this situation is not addressed, elephant populations will have to be reduced and condemned to survive in fenced protected areas while the negative attitudes of humans towards wildlife impact becomes engrained in the minds of many people. Recent mitigation strategies were developed aiming at enhancing existing traditional approaches and improving upon their effectiveness. An innovative chili pepper dispenser was developed to apply pepper directly at the offending elephant, teaching them to respect passive repellents. This concept mimics interactions between animal species to form an effective form of a virtual fence. The advanced chili applicator, developed in a hand held version, is the 'Mhiripiribomba' and the ambush version is the 'Ambushchillibomba'. They fire ping pong balls, filled with a concentrated chili liquid, at speeds of 250ft/sec that burst on contact on or near the elephant, atomizing the concentrate into a fine spray, and creating a deterrent. After hundreds of tests in southern Africa, the industrial version of the 'Mhiripiribomber' offers an opportunity to disseminate this tool at low cost. Combined with sustainable revenues from wildlife, the improvement of mitigation measures with this chili dispenser will increase the wildlife acceptance capacity that the human community is willing to tolerate. Through the creation of memory fences, it will facilitate elephants respecting human activities and aid the acceptance of wildlife corridor in crop land.
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    SYSMAS: a handy software to manage by SMS & Web interface notifications on HWC & other wildlife events…
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014-09) Le Bel, Sébastien, speaker; Chavernac, David, speaker; Breck, Stewart, moderator; International Wildlife Ranching Symposium, producer
    Human-wildlife conflicts have drastically increased around conservation areas in Africa in recent decades, thus undermining the peaceful cohabitation of wildlife populations and rural human settlements. Mitigation packages include various reporting forms, which are often ineffective since the information conveyed is generally scattered and useless. The booming mobile phone sector and the popular use of text messages (SMS) have provided an opportunity to assess the impact of real-time communication systems in human-wildlife conflict mitigation strategies. After preliminary tests conducted in Mozambique and Zimbabwe with FrontlineSMS, we improved the recording and transfer of raw information generated at field level with the development of an integrated system called SYSMAS. Apart from improving the quality of wildlife based information, SYSMAS was developed as a handy management tool informing in real time decision makers and easy to upload even without specific computer skills. This paper details how easy any human-wildlife conflict incident or wildlife event can be translated into a set of explanatory variables and captured on mobile phones with ad-hoc SMS models. According to local communication facilities, real-time sharing of the information could be achieved directly through a Web interface or via SMS; this last been more handy in remote African farmland. Once adopted, such a human-wildlife conflict early warning system could be deployed at low cost. The same approach could be promoted for the establishment of reporting systems on wildlife disease outbreaks.