The International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) and Coexistence was held March 30–April 1 in Oxford, UK, and was the first global conference solely focused on HWC. The conference was organized by the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group and supported by the GWP. The GWP delegation included 22 government focal points and project team members from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

During the conference, the GWP organized a session on Enabling Coexistence – The Role of Policies in Mitigating HWC, in which government representatives from India, Namibia, Mozambique and Canada, as well as representatives from the Elephant Protection Initiative and Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program, presented on how countries were prioritizing HWC in their national and regional biodiversity agendas and discussed the role of national policies in managing HWC.

Videos of the conference sessions can be viewed here.

Find the conference key takeaways here.

One of the GWP delegates to the conference, Hailu Zerfu, HWC and coexistence expert at the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA), was recently featured as “Friend of the Month” in the EPI Foundation newsletter. He shares what he sees is the situation of HWC in Ethiopia today, a critical issue similarly felt across other GWP projects.  

Read the story here.

Following the online knowledge series "The Win-Win of Gender Integration," the GWP organized an in-person training from March 21–24 in Panama City and Metetí, Panamá. The workshop offered hands-on training to GWP project teams from Panama, Ecuador, and Belize by providing opportunities for knowledge exchange on ways to implement a gender-inclusive approach in wildlife conservation activities.

Building off of the guidance provided in the Collaborative Management Partnership (CMP) toolkit, the GWP, in partnership with the Rwanda Development Board, organized a study tour in February in Kigali and Akagera National Park in Rwanda. Ten GWP countries from Africa joined the study tour to learn about protected area management and enhance understanding of CMPs—and their best practices, challenges, and opportunities. Delegates say they plan to use this knowledge to review CMP arrangements in their countries, propose pilot CMPs, and prioritize greater community involvement in protected area management.

This documentary highlights the work the GWP Zimbabwe project has done to reduce threats to wildlife, habitat, and livelihoods of local communities in one of the key biodiversity country’s hotspots—the Mid to Lower Zambezi Valley. The project is executed by Zimbabwe's Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality with support from UNDP.

The executing partner of the GWP project in Namibia, the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, hosted a national conference on HWC from May 10–12. The sessions discussed compensation policies in Namibia, community-focused educational videos that raise awareness on preventing HWC, and solutions such as Wildlife Credits that have the potential to add value to local incomes beyond tourism and help mitigate costs of HWC.

Watch the sessions here.

This story developed by the GWP’s UNDP-GEF-USAID project “Reducing Maritime Trafficking of Wildlife between Africa and Asia” covers the challenges, beneficiaries, impacts, and building blocks used to tackle wildlife crime: forensic accounting for wildlife trafficking interdiction, cooperation-enhancing information sharing across jurisdictions, and uniform sentencing.

Explore the story on the Panorama Platform here.

You can also read an interview with Rod Khattabi, the Chief Accountability Officer and the Justice Initiative director for Grace Farms Foundation.

The Bhutan project executed by the Tourism Council of Bhutan published their first Knowledge Magazine distributed with the national newspaper that is a compilation of stories, news, and opinions by national experts, passionate individuals, and district officials in Bhutan on biodiversity conservation, HWC, and ecotourism perspectives in their districts, with highlights on the least-visited tourist destinations in Bhutan.

Zero Wild Meat was a campaign conducted by WWF between October and December 2022 that spotlighted two serious threats—risks to public health and risks to nature—in order to reduce the consumption of wild meat in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). The campaign largely focused on wild meat consumed in restaurants, marketplaces, or by urban consumers, and not in vulnerable, rural communities where livelihoods can depend on such consumption. Upon completion of the campaign, when asked, 95% of wild meat consumers who saw the message of the campaign said they were convinced to altogether stop consuming wild meat, or consume less of it.

The campaign applied a behavior change lens to consumption of high-risk wildlife products that could lead to zoonotic spillover—topics that will see enhanced attention in the new GEF-8 projects.

in the report & feature story.

This environmental and natural resources crimes risk assessment tool (environmental module) is part of the National Money Laundering/Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment (NRA) Toolkit developed by the World Bank Group to support client countries and jurisdictions to self-assess their money laundering and terrorist financing risks. The module was funded by the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) through funds to the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC)–check out ICCWC’s new website here.

Unlocking Private Finance for Nature hosted by the Amazon Sustainable Landscapes (ASL) program

Drawing upon the 2020 report by the World Bank, Mobilizing Private Sector Finance for Nature, this webinar will explore how the private sector can help unlock the resources needed to address the biodiversity and climate crises.

April 2023: Preventing Diseases in Wildlife Management: Sharing Guidance and Insights to Support Practice

Recording |  Presentation

If you want to learn more about this topic, François Diaz, Scientific Coordinator for Wildlife and Bees at the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), will introduce the brand new “Guidelines for reducing the risk of disease spillover events at markets selling wildlife and along the wildlife supply chain” at an International Alliance against Health Risks in Wildlife Trade webinar on June 13. Click here to sign up.

Other past GWP webinars can be found here.