lots of the things that we do in our day-to-day lives negatively affect the animals that we share the planet with in most cases this is through what we eat or the way that we power our cars or our homes but in some places around the world humans affect animals lives more directly human Wildlife conflicts refers to the negative interactions between humans and wild animals and these conflicts can result in injury and even death human Wildlife conflict is a very important yet controversial topic as the conflicts are very often hard to resolve human Wildlife conflict is often caused by competition for natural resources and as the human population grows and we transform more land into agricultural land the conflicts are only going to get more frequent for the local people and the local government it's almost too easy to take the human side but really there should be a limit on how much land we can take the majority of large animals on this planet need a lot of land to survive and if we encroach on these wild areas the animals simply have nowhere to go when wild animals have conflicts with humans the human responses often lethal and this is part of the reason why we have so many endangered animals on this planet today in today's video I will be going through just a few of these conflicts and the reasons behind them as I will be going through three tragic human Wildlife conflicts from around the world for our first conflict we can head to both Africa and Asia and we can focus on three different species in Africa this conflict involves the African bush elephants and the African Forest elephants and of course in Asia it involves the Asian elephants elephants are very complex and intelligent creatures and they're loved by most people around the world they are capable of feeling many complex emotions that we only associate with humans and of course they're very protective of their young and other members of their group for the most part it's understandable why an elephant would hate a human because really we are responsible for their downfall there are around 415 000 wild elephants alive today and this is only around 10 percent of their population 100 years ago the main reason behind this decline is the ivory trade but also a lot of elephants are lost to human elephant conflict because elephants are so large they need to get through a lot of food in one day and this often means that they will raid Farms as elephants are so large there's little that you can do to stop them and this leaves many farmers feeling helpless in some cases farmers will react aggressively and some will even kill the elephants more than 60 elephants were found dead in retaliation incidents in Northeast India and Sumatra in 2001 and these elephants were thought to be poisoned by Plantation workers in these conflicts it's not only the elephants that suffer as over a hundred people are killed by elephants in India each year and over 200 people have been killed by elephants in Kenya over the past seven years when a human is killed by an elephantic and lead to the whole family hating the animal and may even tried to kill it out of Revenge as elephants are so intelligent this can also work the other way round because if a group of elephants has a very bad experience with humans they're more likely to act aggressively when they see humans again this means that the elephants could kill completely innocent people and this of course makes the conflict even worse unfortunately there isn't really an easy solution to this conflict but there have been a few successful techniques as elephants don't seem to like chili or tobacco these have been used as deterrents to keep elephants out of fields and in some parts of Asia it has proven to be quite effective another way to keep elephants away from farms is to grow crops that they don't like and making the terrain harder for the elephants to get across a lot of these techniques are harder to do in poorer areas an elephant's poisoning is still rampant in Palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia so really it looks like this conflict is going to be a problem for years to come and we really do need to come up with a solution soon but for our next conflict we will be heading to South America as the animal involved in this conflict is the spectacled bear and this bear is native to the Andes Mountains in northern and western South America and is the only living species of bear native to South America it is the last remaining short-faced bear and its closest relatives are the giant panda and and the extinct Florida spectacled bear this species really is quite strange and unique and it seems to be a lot less aggressive than the Bears of North America they usually Retreat from the presence of humans but like most other Bears female spectacled bears are very protective of their young there has only been a single reported human death due to a spectacled bear and the bear that caused this death was being hunted and had already been shot the only South American creatures able to hunt these bears are cougars and jaguars but even these Predators have a very hard time doing so like most other Bears the spectacled bear is omnivorous with only around five percent of its diets being composed of meat it mostly eats plant matter in the form of cactus bamboo and palm nuts but it will eat birds and rodents as well as carrion unfortunately this species is facing many threats in the wild and these threats come in the form of habitat loss habitat fragmentation and also human Wildlife conflict lack of knowledge around these Bears is one of the reasons behind this conflict as many farmers see them as a threat to their livestock even though these Bears can kill animals as large as Mountain tapiers they very rarely go after cattle they will of course feed on cattle that have died from natural causes and then in a lot of cases Farmers assume that the spectacled Bears have killed the cattle due to the fear of losing livestock these bears are often killed on site and this really doesn't help their situation these bears are currently listed as vulnerable and there are only around 2 500 to 10 000 mature individuals left in the wild if this wasn't enough poaching is also a big problem for these bears as their gallbladders can be worth up to 150 which is five times the average monthly wage in some South American countries such as Ecuador the easiest way to stop this human Wildlife conflict is to Simply educate more people about this extremely rare species if a bear is in the area they are almost always blamed for livestock deaths and in most cases it's far more likely for another Predator to be the culprit as I've already covered these Bears very rarely eat meat so really it's very very unlikely for them to kill livestock if more people understood this then less bears would be killed and this would hopefully mean that they would be able to bounce back for our final conflicts we will be heading over to Europe as the animal involved in this conflict is the Eurasian Wolf the Eurasian wolf is a subspecies of gray wolf native to Europe and Asia and it was once widespread across Eurasia before the Middle Ages there have been conflicts between humans and wolves for hundreds of thousands of years and it's still a conflict that we haven't really resolved all for tax on humans are extremely rare and fatalities are even rarer the conflict arises when wolves attack livestock and this sort of conflict is relatively common it's the main reason why Eurasian wolf numbers have been dropping over the past few hundred years and it's the main reason why they're extinct in some areas such as the UK it really is a shame that these creatures have disappeared throughout most of their range but there have been a few attempts to bring them back they have been reintroduced into some parts of their native range these three introductions are often very controversial the Wolves benefit the ecosystem and boost biodiversity but of course livestock owners don't want them there many farmers resort to shooting predators to protect their livestock but really there are less destructive ways to protect them despite protests by WWF and other concerned Partners five wolves were killed in Norway in 2005 and at the time this was a quarter of the country's wolf population the Norwegian government granted licenses to hundreds of farmers to kill the wolves and this essentially doomed them unfortunately things like this are happening all across Europe but some countries are a lot better at dealing with the conflict in Romania there isn't much human wolf conflict and this is mainly due down for the conflict management measures that they have in place they protect their livestock with electric wire fences and Sheepdogs and this proves to be effective in most areas in some parts of Europe farmers are simply unwilling to do this and this is part of the reason why Predator numbers in Europe plummeting it really is upsetting that this conflict is still going on when it is preventable but hopefully the situation will improve in the future there are a lot more examples of human Wildlife conflicts around the world so if you think you know of any then let me know down in the comments below but thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed if you liked it please leave a like And subscribe if you want to see more videos like these but until next time goodbye [Music]