Research overview: fencing and physical exclusion in big-cat conflict management

This overview synthesises the use of fencing, from electrified perimeter fences around reserves to village-boundary barriers and predator-proof enclosures, to separate big cats from people and livestock. It reviews evidence from fenced lion reserves in southern Africa, which can dramatically reduce conflict and edge mortality, against the ecological costs of fragmentation, blocked movement, and severed connectivity. The literature weighs the conservation debate between fenced and unfenced approaches, the high cost and maintenance demands, and partial measures like fencing only calving areas or village edges. The survey frames fencing as highly effective for damage reduction in some contexts but ecologically and economically fraught, embodying core trade-offs between separation and landscape-scale coexistence.