Kenya’s pangolins kept dying on electric fences. So landowners switched off the bottom wires.
The fix was two unpowered wires.
TWO WIRES, SWITCHED OFF.
Kenya’s only known giant ground pangolin population is squeezed into the Nyekweri Forest landscape near the Maasai Mara, where electrified fences have become a lethal barrier. Local landowners are adapting those fences rather than removing them, creating safer passage while still protecting livestock and crops.
WHAT HAPPENED
Mongabay reported September 15 that electric fences caused 14 of the 15 giant ground pangolin deaths recorded near Nyekweri Forest since 2022. With fewer than 30 giant ground pangolins believed to remain in Kenya, landowners working with The Pangolin Project are voluntarily switching off the lowest two or three strands of electric fencing. Roughly 134 km (83 mi) — about half the mapped electrified fencing in the landscape — has been modified this way. More than 6,000 hectares of privately owned land have also entered conservation easements. The effort is meaningful but incomplete: habitat loss, subdivision and remaining live fences still threaten the population.
WHY THIS IS HOPESLOP
The obstacle was brutally literal: a wire six inches too low and switched on. The response is also literal — switch those strands off, keep the livestock barrier, let the pangolins walk underneath. It is not a total rescue, but 134 kilometers of safer fence is what practical coexistence looks like.
ORIGINAL SOURCEMongabay / The Pangolin ProjectRead the original report
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