Hard scales outside. Soft bits inside. It’s a creative survival strategy for a quirky mammal who walks on its hind legs, with its front legs and tail held aloft.
However, when the pangolin steps over a live wire commonly found on electric fences, it dies helplessly, as its defensive instinct causes it to wrap tightly around the wire.
This is a heartbreaking, deadly twist of fate for the world’s only mammal covered in protective scales.
About 2,000 Temminck’s pangolins die in this unthinkable way in South Africa annually, according to Dr Darren Pietersen, one of Africa’s leading pangolin researchers.
“This new estimate of 2,000 pangolins being killed on fences per year is for all electrified fences — game farms, game reserves, nature reserves, national parks and livestock fences,” Pietersen says, referring to the species’ natural local range in northern South Africa. “We have included it in the new South African National Red List Assessment for pangolins, which we are busy finalising.”
Based on a 2014 study and further research, the figure is also drawn from subsequent interviews with livestock farmers.
“We feel confident in this estimate based on our interviews,” Pietersen says.
‘One a year was quite amazing’
Now an unexplained increase in pangolin sightings at Sabi Sand Nature Reserve, South Africa’s oldest enclave of luxury private reserves next to Kruger National Park, has triggered both excitement and concern among conservationists.
Yet, in 2022 alone, the reserve recorded 19 pangolin sightings. “In 2023, we saw 10 at the fence. Two died, but we released eight back into the reserve.”
The reserve — about 63,000 hectares across its protected area — has been forced to adapt as this apparent increase comes with a downside.
Listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, pangolins are getting too close to the fence.
Fence dangers spur change
There is some irony in Sabi Sand’s conservation efforts, because Iain and his team recently upgraded the reserve’s fence to combat rhino poaching, helping slash incidents to almost zero in the past 18 months.
“We created a new hard-step boundary with a positive wire right at the bottom to deter poachers and predators,” Iain explains.
They conquered one war, but unwittingly found themselves faced with another.
In early 2024, a pangolin tagged and released after months of observation was found dead, caught in the fence a second time while fleeing a predator, recalls Julie Olivier, Sabi Sand’s head of conservation.
“It was terrible,” says Julie, Iain’s wife. “That really inspired us to find funding to finish the fence.”
The ‘pangolin protection fence’: a novel approach
Heavily populated South Africa does not offer obvious alternatives to fences, which prevent conflict between humans and wildlife, as well as disease transmission. If fences don’t work, they can only be modified.
Indeed, Professor Ray Jansen of the IUCN’s Pangolin Specialist Group says he is involved in a project to test three experimental designs. The lowest live wire, he recommends, should be at least 30cm off the ground.
“Sorting out the electric fence problem is actually scarily easy,” Pietersen adds. While certain Big Five game farms have already raised their live wire, some provincial authorities continue to insist on a lower level that happens to be roughly equal to pangolin chest height. Livestock farming may require different solutions for jackals, Pietersen cautions, and he is collaborating “on a few ideas”.
Initiated in early 2023 and unveiled in September, Sabi Sand’s own “pangolin protection fence” was designed inside the reserve.
It employs a novel approach, featuring a mesh pattern of small, welded squares lining a 53km ground stretch of the western boundary.
“Now there’s just one live wire 52.5cm off the ground,” Julie explains, pointing out that the new design can only be climbed vertically.
In such a scenario a pangolin will simply tip backwards, because its claws — not its tummy — would reach the live wire first.
Detected by fence alarms, two pangolins were caught burrowing into the soft soil at a drainage line, but the weak spots were subsequently blocked with rocks.
“We’ve monitored a number of species — such as an African rock python, a monitor lizard, a honeybadger and a leopard tortoise — next to the pangolin fence,” Baloyi beams. “They couldn’t get through.”
According to Pietersen’s 2022 study, about 30,000 tortoises are electrocuted in their keratine caravans every year, so Baloyi’s tortoise sighting was not trivial.
The net result of the pangolin protection fence “minimises the need for reactive sting operations, allowing our team to concentrate resources on other species at risk from illegal trade”, says the reserve’s environmental crime intelligence manager, who cannot be named for safety reasons.
(Since 2016, the crime intelligence team has recovered multiple pangolins — deemed the world’s most trafficked mammal — from captivity, with poachers wanting up to $2-million for a single animal.)
Giant pangolin rediscovered in Senegal
Scalability: looking ahead
The fence cost about R2.4-million. Sabi Sand reallocated about R1.2-million from its budget, with locally based Ulusaba Private Game Reserve and Inyati Game Lodge also making financial contributions. Non-profit donations for construction came from Wildlife Crime Prevention, which provided R250,000, and ConservEarth, which gave R955,000.
Is this prototype scalable?
“It almost wasn’t an option because it was expensive,” Iain observes, “but we managed to make it work.”
A Temminck’s pangolin, unable to penetrate the fence, is filmed looking for a way through Baloyi’s new mesh barrier. (Video: Sabi Sand Nature Reserve)
For the rest, balancing anti-poaching security with wildlife safety is a tightrope, but the call to action is clear.
“If we had electric fences killing rhinos, we wouldn’t stand for it,” Iain concludes.
Now, neither lions nor pangolins can get through this barrier. That’s why they’ve dubbed it a “pango-lion fence” — a possible multispecies solution.
“Iain and I are passionate about doing management based on science, but it took the push of passion to get this done,” Julie says.
Her day-to-day tasks may include anything from rhino dehorning to leading the annual aerial censuses, but she describes “stopping animals dying on the fence” as her “proudest moment”.
“Obviously, this one is still a trial. In conservation, it can easily take 10 years to see results,” Julie says. “So far, this fence has made an immediate difference.”
