Talking to Communities Beats Electric Fences in the Fight Against Poaching, Survey Finds

Poaching remains the single most frequently reported human threat inside South Africa’s protected areas, but the most effective weapon against it may not be razor wire or high-voltage cable. A new survey of 49 conservation practitioners working in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga has found that reserves running community engagement programmes reported roughly 69 percent lower odds of poaching than those without such programmes, while electrified fencing was actually associated with higher reported odds of illegal activity. The study, published in the journal Environmental Management, offers one of the most detailed pictures yet of how frontline conservation staff perceive the management tools deployed across three of South Africa’s most biodiversity-rich provinces.

The research team, led by Ndivhuwo Shivambu of Tshwane University of Technology together with colleagues at the University of South Africa and the University of the Witwatersrand, interviewed field rangers, wildlife ecologists, environmental officers and game capture personnel using semi-structured questionnaires. Respondents were drawn from 13 protected areas, including Kruger National Park, Ndumo Game Reserve, Tembe Elephant Park, Lapalala Wilderness and Sabi Sands Private Nature Reserve. Using stratified random sampling, the team recruited 19 practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal, 17 in Limpopo and 13 in Mpumalanga, conducting roughly 30-minute interviews at respondents’ homes or workplaces, with translators available where needed. Each respondent was linked to a specific protected area, which served as the primary analytical unit.

The headline finding is a stark provincial gradient in reported poaching. In KwaZulu-Natal, 84.2 percent of practitioners said poaching was a problem at their reserve, followed by 71 percent in Limpopo and 61.5 percent in Mpumalanga. The authors suggest this pattern may reflect differences in wildlife value, accessibility and enforcement capacity. KwaZulu-Natal holds several high-value rhino populations that have historically attracted sophisticated poaching networks, a dynamic well documented in research on the social economy of rhino horn trafficking. Poaching, the study notes, does not merely threaten individual animals; it reduces species numbers, disrupts ecological balance and undermines the long-term viability of the protected areas themselves.

On the infrastructure side, the survey revealed that perimeter fencing is essentially universal, reported by 100 percent of respondents in KwaZulu-Natal, 88.9 percent in Limpopo and 83.3 percent in Mpumalanga. Electrified fencing, by contrast, varied sharply: 73.7 percent of KwaZulu-Natal respondents reported it, compared with 42.1 percent in Limpopo and just 38.5 percent in Mpumalanga. Nearly all reserves in all three provinces shared boundaries with local communities or farmland, underscoring how tightly woven conservation landscapes are into human-dominated terrain in northeastern South Africa.

The statistical core of the study is a binary logistic regression that tested six management variables against practitioner-reported poaching occurrence. The overall model was statistically significant, and two predictors stood out. Community engagement programmes were associated with approximately 69 percent lower odds of reported poaching, with an odds ratio of 0.31 and a confidence interval excluding one. Electrified fencing showed the opposite pattern, with an odds ratio of 2.95, meaning reserves with electrified fences reported higher odds of poaching. The authors are careful to stress that this is an association, not proof of causation: electrified fencing is likely installed precisely where poaching pressure is already recognised as a serious management concern, so the fence may be a marker of risk rather than a driver of it.

Manpower emerged as a chronic and unevenly distributed problem. In KwaZulu-Natal, a striking 94.7 percent of respondents said staffing was inadequate, while in Limpopo 68.4 percent reported sufficient manpower, and Mpumalanga sat in between with 46.2 percent reporting adequate staffing. This matters because ranger density across much of Africa falls below recommended levels, and underfunded patrol teams are often spread thinly across vast, difficult terrain. Previous research has shown that reactive deployment, concentrating rangers in known hotspots after incidents, can displace poaching activity rather than reduce it. The study concludes that manpower is a necessary but insufficient component of anti-poaching work, most effective when woven into a broader strategy that includes community partnerships.

Engagement-related measures were widely implemented, and again KwaZulu-Natal led the way, with 94.7 percent of respondents reporting both community engagement programmes and environmental education initiatives, compared with 63.2 percent and 78.9 percent respectively in Limpopo and 53.8 percent and 84.6 percent in Mpumalanga. Trans-boundary monitoring of reserve boundaries, designed to prevent wildlife transgressions and detect illegal activity, was reported by 79 percent of KwaZulu-Natal respondents, 65 percent in Limpopo and 92 percent in Mpumalanga. The authors interpret the high adoption of social interventions in KwaZulu-Natal as a sign that managers facing the greatest poaching pressure recognise the need to invest in parallel community-focused strategies.

Attitudes toward community-based natural resource management, the approach that positions local people as custodians of nature through ecotourism revenue, employment and sustainable resource use, were broadly positive across all three provinces. Roughly two-thirds of practitioners in each province expressed support: 65 percent in Limpopo, 63 percent in KwaZulu-Natal and 62 percent in Mpumalanga. Practitioners highlighted community awareness, environmental responsibility and sustainable harvesting of resources such as grass and traditional medicine, though some voiced scepticism about whether subsistence practices can survive exploitation under capitalist systems. The authors argue this support signals a potential shift away from the exclusionary, colonial-era conservation model that displaced indigenous communities from ancestral lands and excluded them from decision-making, a legacy that has fuelled resentment and reactive practices such as poaching.

Historical context looms large over these findings. South Africa’s protected areas were largely established under exclusionary principles that treated humans as separate from nature, relocating communities to settlement zones at park edges and cutting off access to game meat, firewood and medicinal plants. That marginalisation, the study argues, weakened local stewardship of biodiversity and contributed to the very tensions that managers now confront. Conversely, examples from South Africa’s Oribi Gorge Nature Reserve and Tanzania’s Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park show that revenue-sharing and community involvement models can support both ecological restoration and rural development, and similar programmes in Uganda and Botswana have improved relations, reduced poaching and encouraged participation in governance.

The study’s recommendations are pointed. Conservation agencies should expand community engagement beyond awareness-raising to deliver tangible benefits such as employment, revenue sharing, resource access and co-management roles. Fencing should be deployed strategically in high-risk boundary zones, maintained regularly and combined with community engagement rather than treated as a standalone solution. The severe staffing shortfalls in KwaZulu-Natal demand urgent attention, but simply adding rangers will not help unless deployment is intelligence-led and paired with professional development and community partnerships. Field practitioners themselves need stronger training in socio-ecological literacy, conflict-sensitive conservation and participatory governance, and lasting progress will require formal collaboration between conservation agencies, municipalities, agricultural and development partners. The authors acknowledge limitations: the survey captured binary, practitioner-reported poaching rather than incident frequency or temporal trends, and future work should integrate incident records with socioeconomic and ecological data. Even so, the message is clear. In the contested landscapes where wildlife and people share a border, the cheapest and most powerful anti-poaching technology may be trust.

Subject of Research: Management responses to poaching in South African protected areas based on conservation practitioners' survey perspectives

Article Title: Conservation Practitioners’ Perspectives on Management Responses to Poaching in South African Protected Areas

Article References: Shivambu, N., Shivambu, T. C., Nelufule, T., Makwarela, T. G., Nangammbi, T. C., & Seoraj-Pillai, N. (2026). Conservation Practitioners’ Perspectives on Management Responses to Poaching in South African Protected Areas. Environmental Management, 76(10), Article 338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-026-02634-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00267-026-02634-7

Keywords: poaching, protected areas, community engagement, South Africa, conservation practitioners, electrified fencing, human-wildlife conflict, anti-poaching, community-based natural resource management, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga