Pyproj DLL load failed while importing _network

Question

I'm trying to import geopandas in Python. The pyproj module fails to import, with the following error message:

  File ~\.conda\envs\lizard\lib\site-packages\geopandas\_compat.py:9 in <module>
    import pyproj

  File ~\.conda\envs\lizard\lib\site-packages\pyproj\__init__.py:49 in <module>
    import pyproj.network

  File ~\.conda\envs\lizard\lib\site-packages\pyproj\network.py:10 in <module>
    from pyproj._network import (  # noqa: F401 pylint: disable=unused-import

ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _network: The specified module could not be found.

I have installed geopandas with conda install -c conda-forge geopandas. I've tried to conda remove and re-install again, but that does not work. I've tried to reinstall pyproj separately with pip install pyproj and conda install -c conda-forge pyproj but neither have worked. conda update pyproj and geopandas hasn't worked either.

In my environment, pyproj clearly has network.py, _network.cp39-win_amd64.pyd, and _network.pyi, so I'm not sure why the module cannot be found.

ETA: I'm using geopandas 0.10.2 and pyproj 3.3.0.

Answer 1

Had to abandon conda install entirely and created a new environment which uses pip install to get packages. Followed instructions for pip install geopandas and now it's working.