Nepal develops new fencing to protect farms and elephants

An electric fence has been developed in Napal to stop elephants from raiding people’s crops and houses.

 However, it will allow other wildlife, people and cattle to pass through unhindered.

The Himalayan Tiger Foundation is working with the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), WWF-Nepal and the authorities of Bardiya National Park will test a new approach for keeping elephants and people separated.

Together with scientists from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands they have developed an experimental electric fence.

It uses a single live wire, instead of multiple wires, at a height of 180 cm that allows people and cattle, but also deer, tigers, and rhinos to walk underneath it.

The idea is to stop the much taller elephants from going through but not other wildlife.

Hopefully it also prevents people from cutting fences because they can pass through unhindered.

It’s an excellent idea.

Whether it will work will largely depend on how well the scientists understand elephants and even more importantly how well they understand communities.

Fences only work where communities support and maintain them.

Getting this support is not easy.

Co-financing schemes appear necessary to create the required sense of ownership from communities.

Human-elephant encounters are costly to the community. A recent study showed that the total yearly elephant damage in the 5,000 ha project area is about US$ 35,000 – 50,000 in crop losses and damage to houses.

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Nepal tests fencing approach to protect farms and elephants

“We are not angry with the elephant and know that we need to protect it, but we also need to protect ourselves”.

This is a brave statement by Kaushala Budha, a Nepali farmer in the Patabhar hamlet, whose house had been nearly destroyed by a raiding elephant the previous night. I had expected more anger and a call for revenge, but no such thing. “If the government would help us, we would pack our bags and leave”, she says. Not too surprising because last night’s raid on her house was the 6th time in a year.


For the past week I have been working in the Bardiya National Park in western Nepal. The Himalayan Tiger Foundation (NTF) invited me to come and help them think through their program on human-elephant encounters. NTF works here with National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) and WWF-Nepal, advising them on improving park management and ultimately increasing the abundance of key species that occur, like tiger, rhinos, elephants, swamp deer, and a range of other exciting species.

This time, we are here to address two issues: Testing a new system of electric fencing, and starting a grassland improvement program to increase palatable grasses to get more deer and antelopes and ultimately more tigers.

Human-elephant encounters are costly to the community. A recent study showed that the total yearly elephant damage in the 5,000 ha project area is about US$ 35,000 – 50,000 in crop losses and damage to houses.

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