Francine Madden
Executive Director and Founder
Human-Wildlife Conflict Collaboration
Francine Madden is the co-Founder and Executive Director of HWCC—a global partnership working to integrate best practice standards in analyzing and addressing deep-rooted conflict into the conservation field. Recognizing the value of integrating inter-disciplinary and multi-sectoral perspectives into conservation, Ms. Madden pioneered efforts to bring expertise and lessons learned from the deep-rooted (war/peace) conflict resolution field into the work of HWCC and the field of conservation. Francine also serves one of HWCC’s lead trainers for their Conservation Conflict Resolution training.
Prior to launching the HWCC in November, 2006, Francine Madden had been working on human-wildlife conflict and conservation conflict issues for over ten years. Francine Madden spearheaded efforts in Uganda to address human-mountain gorilla conflict in the mid-90’s and after facilitating a multi-stakeholder, three-country assessment and resolution process, she was commissioned to design a human-gorilla conflict mitigation project to address human-mountain gorilla conflict in the three African countries (Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda) in which this species exists. Ms. Madden has counseled governments, including Bhutan, Brazil and Uganda, on a variety of human-wildlife conflict issues, including strategies for addressing livestock depredation, development of appropriate national HWC management policy, the applicability and appropriateness of a variety of tools and techniques to mitigate HWC. Ms. Madden has developed and managed conservation projects and international technical assistance and training programs in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She also developed the first global assessment of compensation schemes used to mitigate human-wildlife conflict in and around protected areas.
Francine has organized and facilitated several international, national and regional workshops on HWC, including the 2004 Bhutan National Tiger Action Plan conference, HWC workshops at the 5th World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa and the 2004 World Conservation Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, and an African multi-country conflict mitigation and prevention workshop. Francine Madden has two masters’ degrees from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University and is the author of numerous publications and presentations on various aspects of human-wildlife conflict, conservation conflict, and the human element of conservation work.