The Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy is home to approximately 250 elephants at any one time. In areas surrounding the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, the elephants are the main driving force behind human-wildlife conflicts. Over the recent years, there have been issues involving a few individual elephants breaking through our fences to get into neighbouring farms in search of food. People living in these areas are forced to protect their farms, because the destruction of their crops could mean the loss of their food supply for a year, the difference between being self-sufficient versus being destitute.

To help resolve, prevent and mitigate the arising problem of conflict between humans and wild animals, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in September 2005, began monitoring problem elephants. These individual fence breakers were identified through their natural marks (ear-marks, horn size and shape, etc...). To minimize fence breakages and crop raids, four principal management interventions have since been implemented:

• Fence upgrading and modification
• Expansion of conservation area
• Establishment of movement corridors and
• De-tusking

Fence Upgrading and Modification
Between October 2005 and February 2006, a high voltage electric fence was erected around Ol Pejeta’s boundary not only to demarcate the Conservancy, but more importantly, to prevent any further conflict between wildlife and communities. With time, the upgraded fence greatly reduced the incidences of fence breakages. However, some sections called “pressure points” continued to experience breakages.

In order to rectify this problem, these pressure points were further modified by putting “outriggers”- wires fixed to a short fence at a 45 degree angle - to deter the elephants from approaching the main fence. This was aimed at ensuring that the electrified wires made contact at the udder of the elephant, thus sending a shock to the animal and hence deterring them from breaking the fence. Due to extra materials required to erect the short fence, the outriggers were later on fixed onto the main fence. To facilitate assessment of the effectiveness of the fence upgrading and modifications, one habitual fence breaker (‘Kimani’) was harnessed with a Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) collar. A mobile phone SIM card was place in Kimani’s collar, which worked together with a virtual "geofence". This virtual geofence uses a global positioning system to mirror the conservatory's boundaries. Thus, whenever Kimani approached this fence, the SIM card in his collar was prompted to send a text message to the rangers giving them the opportunity to intervene before any damage was caused. Through subsequent monitoring of Kimani, the rangers were able to see that he was unable to break through the short fence.

Outriggers from a short fence on the Ol Pejeta Conservancy	GSM collar on the trouble elephant named "Kimani"

Expansion of Conservation Area
The former Sweetwaters Game Reserve was a 24,000-acre private ranch. In 2007, to accommodate the burgeoning wildlife population, the game reserve was expanded to 75,000 acre prime wildlife area. This resulted to a very high reduction in the incidences of fence breakages and crop raids in surrounding communities, giving the problem elephants more ground to forage for food.

Corridors
Three corridors or gaps were set up along the northern boundary of the Conservancy thus connecting it to the larger Laikipia–Samburu ecosystem. This was aimed at facilitating movement of “big-ranging” animals like elephants, including the fence breaking individuals. The latter were observed to use these gaps as illustrated in the photo below.

"Elvin" crossing the corridor to Mutara Ranch

De-tusking
To further minimize fence breakages and crop raids, de-tusking of the habitual fence breakers was implemented as a pilot project. A total of seven habitual fence breakers were de-tusked in collaboration with Kenya Wildlife Service Elephant Programme.

Since elephants are very intelligent, the de-tusked animals devised new tactics of breaking-out by using their trunks (as their tusks were already shortened) to bring down fence posts.

"Nelson" pushing out the fence with his trunk and leading other elephants out of the Conservancy. Nelson was one of the elephants whore tusks were shortened but he found another technique to break the fence

Effectiveness of the Management Interventions
A combination of these management interventions has resulted in significant reductions of fence breakages and crop raids. Fence breakages dropped drastically from 2005 to 2007 monitoring period and showed an upsurge in 2008 and recording the highest peak in 2009 due to the drought experienced that year. However, considering breakages to date this year compared to the same period last year, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy will have recorded one of the lowest numbers of breakages. The last time when few incidences were recorded was in 2007, and this could be attributed to the expansion of the former Sweetwaters Game Reserve to form the 75,000 acre prime wildlife area.

Trend in fence breakages since 2005 to July 2010

In conclusion, implementation of a combination of management interventions has resulted in continued decrease in fence breakages on the Ol Pejeta Conservacy and reduction of crop raids in surrounding communities. As such, the Kenya Wildlife Service and with the assistance of other stakeholders, has spearheaded implementation of Ol Pejeta’s fence configuration along parts of western Laikipia district to control crop raids by elephants.