Florian J Weise

I grew up with a strong passion for wildlife, fascinated by watching documentaries and by getting involved from a very early age. Living in Berlin, Germany, the latter was not always possible, but since I can remember my dad used to bring injured or orphaned wild animals home. They would be cared for and eventually released. In my early twenties I moved on to study wildlife management in Tanzania where I got involved with elephant research and human-wildlife conflict in general. Since then my life has revolved around Africa, its wildlife, people, and the tensions ensuing from coexistence. I believe that coexistence is possible, because I have seen it happen. Working with livestock farmers in Namibia for many years, and the wild predators on their lands, showed me that simple conflict solutions can work. These become even more effective when we couple them with solid science. A decade in the field and the “inevitable” PhD confirmed that people will go out of their ways to tolerate dangerous and damage-causing species as long as we (as conservationists) involve them in our work. Sharing research information is paramount! Hence, joining Pride in Our Prides is my next step forward. We develop pragmatic tools (traditional and modern) to address human-lion conflict while basing our work on scientific principles and monitoring. We involve communities directly, live among them and try to sync all the available tools to improve coexistence. We utilize strategies that have proven successful, like proper herding and lion-proof livestock enclosures. We also explore new ones such as real-time lion alerts from GPS tracking collars. I am excited to make this the next step of my career.

May 2016