[caption id="attachment_280" align="alignright" width="300"]
Elephants challenging an electric fence. Photo: L. Osborn from african-elephant.org[/caption]According to the BBC, the Kenyan conservational charity Rhino Ark are going to build a fence around Mt. Kenya to prevent elephants and other wild animals from venturing down into farmland and destroying badly needed crops.
The fence will encircle over 700 square feet of indigenous forests, which also includes many rivers outflowing in all directions down the mountain.
The fence, which will have five electrified strands, will discourage wild animals from straying from the mountain's forests and devastating crops on the small holdings on the other side of the fence.
It discharges a shock, but not one that endangers people or animals.
Building the first phase of the fence, which will be 50km long, has already begun and is expected to be completed by the beginning of 2014, Rhino Ark says.
Minister of Finance Njeru Githae is to drive a post into the ground to officially inaugurate the project on Friday.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says the scheme may seem wildly optimistic, but Rhino Ark has already fenced in the Aberdare mountains, which provide water for Kenya's capital, Nairobi.
That fence took 12 years to complete. This one is expected to take 5 years.
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