Fencing can instantly trigger wildlife mortality when animals collide with or are caught in fencing. Pangolins, a species of focus in our area, are notably weak to electrical fencing. When pangolins are threatened, they roll into a good ball, shielding their delicate smooth bellies. Once they stroll into an electrified fence strand, they instantly coil right into a defensive ball across the wire, inflicting them to be shocked repeatedly, unable to flee. Dr Darren Pietersen, a number one pangolin researcher, mentioned in a current Mongabay information story that “South Africa loses between 1,000 and a couple of,000 pangolins every year to fence electrocutions. This far overshadows the variety of people which might be illegally poached and trafficked,”.
Oblique threats of fencing embrace the blocking of migration routes, the fragmentation of habitat, and modifications in searching by predators. For instance, leopards at Ukuwela can use the fence to their benefit, to run their prey right into a nook or barrier. Kevin Joliffe, our Reserve Supervisor, has seen nyala, impala and wildebeest caught in opposition to fence by the leopards of Ukuwela. By limiting wildlife motion, fences also can improve grazing strain in sure areas, disrupt predator-prey dynamics, block motion that may permit wildlife to comply with the rains to seek out meals and water, and even result in overpopulation of species inside confined areas.
Fences isolate populations, growing the danger of inbreeding and lowering genetic variety, which negatively impacts the long-term survival of the species. New analysis of wildebeest populations from Kenya to South Africa, discovered that the DNA of wildebeests that might nonetheless migrate was totally different and more healthy than their non-migrating family. One other genetic consequence of remoted populations brought on by fencing is the case of South African elephants at Addo Nationwide Park that have misplaced their tusks over a number of generations, brought on by inbreeding.
THE HAZARDS OF FENCING AT SISONKE
The fences at Sisonke Farm have been notably hazardous, that includes extreme barbed wire and razor wire boundaries that have been put in by the prior proprietor. These kind of fences not solely trapped bigger wildlife but additionally posed extreme dangers to smaller animals. A heartbreaking instance is the destiny of a pink duiker caught within the wire, and a turtle that turned caught on an electrical strand of wildlife fencing, resulting in its electrocution. Such incidents underscore the pressing have to take away these harmful boundaries.