HWCM - Ministry of Environment and Tourism

National Workshop on Human Wildlife Conflict Management 2005
• The local communities must be sensitized to the purpose and importance of data
collection. Their buy-in an collaboration is key;
• To maximise acceptance of the scheme among local communities, each enumerator
should be assigned to collect HEC data only from the ward of his/her origin;
• Success is largely dependent on individuals;
• Supervision and encouragement of the enumerators by the researcher is a ‘must’;
• Adequate funding and human resources lacking in many sites;
• Ensuring continuity during periods of low conflict activity;
• It is generally difficult to maintain data collection activities beyond a season or two without
initiating some form of mitigation activity.
Practical lessons learned from data collection:
• To quantify the proportion of farms affected by elephants, all farms at risk should be
mapped;
• GPS is a better alternative to paper maps;
• Important to note characteristics of farms not raided;
• Determining size, sex and age classes of crop-raiders is difficult.
From monitoring to mitigation: the Next Steps
The Decision Support System
• Expert system;
• Not a blue-print;
• Synthesis of lessons learned;
• A “living document”.
Conclusion
• A simple data collection system using trained local enumerators under the supervision of
committed and dedicated supervisors can provide extremely useful information about the
distribution and intensity of conflict at a relatively low cost;
• Adequate resources to ensure continuity of data collection, regular feedback to affected
communities combined with timely implementation of locally-adapted and locally-developed
mitigation strategies are necessary to ensure the continuity and long term success of such
schemes.
The AfESG’s Human Elephant Conflict Data Protocol, Training Package and Decision
Support System are available on: http://iucn.org/afesg/hec
Questions and Answers
Picking up on the point of devolution, Brian Jones (consultant) felt that it was necessary to work
where people had already undertaken development initiatives. Conservancies for instance
provided feedback to their communities using data for management decisions which was an
incentive for them to manage data.
Niskanen said that in some places there is no history of local involvement in NRM. He added that
areas and conditions varied considerably and the reality in Africa was that most places did not
have their own management systems.
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