Social and ecological effectiveness of electric fences in Laikipia, Kenya

With growing fragmentation of elephant habitats across the world, elephants are coming in closer contact with humans, leading to increasing human-elephant conflict over limited space and resources. Laikipia county in Kenya represents one such region where conflict with elephants has been (and continues to be) a widespread problem, stemming from intense land-use zoning since the 1970s. This conflict mainly takes the form of crop raiding by elephants in community farmlands adjoining conservation areas. Electric fencing has been the widely used conflict management tool in the region to prevent elephants from entering croplands. However, the establishment of electric fences can often have hidden political underpinnings, both caused by and resulting in conflicting interests of different land users. As human-elephant conflict is multidimensional, it is essential to incorporate both human and wildlife dimensions when assessing the effectiveness of electric fences in conflict mitigation. While there is a growing body of research on the ecological effects of electric fences, the role of social perceptions in long-term fence effectiveness is often neglected. In this study, I therefore conducted a combined social and ecological assessment of electric fences in Laikipia. For this, I evaluated the perceptions of three local communities (Mutara, Ex Erok and Lorien) towards two major electric fences in Laikipia: the West Laikipia Fence and the Lorien Community Fence. I conducted 188 individual interviews with farmers (and opportunistically pastoralists) in all three communities, comprising questions on demographics, human-elephant conflict, electric fences, and involvement of communities in fence management. I then combined this information with data on fence breaking and crop raiding behaviour of elephants to effectively inform electric fence management strategies in the region. First, I looked at changes in the perceptions of Mutara and Ex Erok between 2016-2022, following upgrades made to the West Laikipia Fence after 2016, through a comparison of results with previous research. Second, I investigated potential factors influencing community perceptions towards fence effectiveness. Third, I mapped fence break and crop raiding hotspots in the three communities. And fourth, I determined the environmental factors affecting crop raiding intensity. Both Mutara and Ex Erok showed more positive perceptions towards fence effectiveness in 2022 as compared to 2016. The main factor found to influence fence perceptions was community involvement in fence management. Communities involved in fence management had more positive fence perceptions than those with no involvement. Crop raiding hotspot mapping revealed that some areas within each community were more affected by crop raiding than others. Fence break hotspot mapping identified fence sections of the West Laikipia Fence more prone to breakages by elephants. Finally, crop raiding intensity in a given farm was found to be strongly affected by the diversity of crops grown there, and weakly by its distance from the nearest roads and electric fences. My results therefore contribute to a better understanding of patterns of crop raiding and fence breakages of elephants in Laikipia. My findings highlight the importance of including sociological data from local communities in assessments of electric fence effectiveness, and also provide empirical evidence on the importance of involving local communities in electric fence management. The findings from this study can serve as a reference to relevant stakeholders for future improvements in electric fence management in Laikipia and elsewhere