Last month I was one of the lecturers of the first Master Class on the Prevention and Mitigation of Human-Elephant Conflict, organised by the Asia Protected Areas Partnership (APAP) in collaboration with the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force and the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme. It was developed in response to the increasing frequency and severity of human-elephant conflicts across the region. Every year, approximately 600 people die from encounters with elephants, while around 400 elephant casualties result from anthropogenic causes. India and Sri Lanka, in particular, experience a disproportionately high number of human and elephant casualties.
My role was bring topics such as Social Marketing and Impact Evaluation to life for the participants, with a particular focus on examples relevant to human-wildlife conflict and in particular human-elephant conflict. It was also great to learn from other topics such as negotiation and peace building!