Background
For centuries, farmers in Northeast China have had to contend with wild boar that raid their fields to eat corn, bean, and millet, the basis of many farmers’ livelihoods. Many farmers call for a reduction in wild boar numbers, but this species is a main prey resource for tigers. To alleviate this conflict, in 2024, WCS China started a community-based electric fence program – a safe, proven method worldwide – to reduce farmers’ agricultural losses to wild boar and support coexistence.
Community engagement
Other electric fence research has found that buy-in from communities – not just individual farmers – is critical to fences becoming a long-term solution to mitigating human-wildlife conflict. We therefore designed our project following the “Guide for Implementing Community-Based Electric Fences for the Effective Mitigation of Human-Elephant Conflict”, a helpful manual developed by the World Bank (link here). Many of the instructions are applicable to all farm-related fencing.
In May 2024, with guidance from the Hadamen township government and the Municipal Forestry Bureau, we selected Sandaogou, a village within Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park with a capable village committee and scattered farmland that is vulnerable to crop damage. We held many discussions with the village committee about the location and design of the fence. We then sought out reliable producers of supplies to ensure that their quality and pricing were recognized by the committee.
Building the fence
The harvest season had already passed when we finally signed an agreement with the government in October 2024. During the winter and spring, we organized 100 households from nine farmer groups to install a 29-km fence over 10 days, surrounding most of the village’s fields.
The open ceremony
An open ceremony was held in July 2025 to formally deliver the ownership to the community and emphasize the maintenance work and safety precautions. More than 90 farmers were organized as a maintenance group to check on fence conditions in their sectors every two days. The energizers were activated following the ceremony, which marked the official initiation of the electric fence's operations.
Representatives of the village committee and the maintenance group standing next to an energizer during the open ceremony.
Summary
The community-led electric fence project in Sandaogou Village represents a pioneering and largest experiment in Northeast China, a hotspot of conflicts between wild boar and other wild ungulates. We believe that our model has great potential to be scaled and to address the common challenge in China.