Electric fences that kill and the Maasai trying to save Kenya’s last giant pangolins

Naserian, a giant ground pangolin tracked by researchers in Kenya's Nyekweri Forest, was found dead beneath an electrified fence after roughly two years of nightly movement across a patchwork of forest, farms and privately fenced land near the Maasai Mara.

Since 2022, researchers have recorded 15 pangolin deaths in the area, 14 of them by electrocution on fences, in a population believed to number fewer than 30 in Kenya. The forest itself has shrunk by more than 80% in two decades as ancestral Maasai land is subdivided, cleared and fenced with roughly 268 kilometers of electrified wire.

In response, some Maasai landowners have begun voluntarily de-electrifying the lowest strands of their fences, creating gaps pangolins can pass under while still deterring livestock predators and larger wildlife. Conservationists describe it as one of the more effective measures so far, though it depends entirely on continued voluntary participation across a rapidly fragmenting landscape.

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