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Darkness falls over a small village in Kenya. Kenya is a country in Africa. The people who live here are getting ready to go to sleep. They're herders, and their cows are resting in a nearby wooden pen called a boma. All is quiet.

The sound of a snapping twig changes everything. The cows raise their heads. They perk their ears. They know something is outside their pen. It's a female lion. The lioness pounces. Her sharp claws rip at the walls of the pen. The frightened cows run in different directions. The lioness tears through the fence and races toward the nearest cow.

All the noise wakens the sleeping herders. They run to the pen, but they're too late. One cow is dead, and the lioness is gone. Scared off by the herders, she left her kill behind.

The lioness returns to her pride without a fresh kill. Her two hungry cubs greet her as she comes closer. They rub their faces against hers. She answers them with a low, rumbling noise. She cannot stay long, though. She has to hunt again so her cubs won't go hungry. This time, she will hunt prey elsewhere.

The herders wait for the lioness to return. Losing livestock to lions is a big deal for these herders. They are the Maasai. They need livestock to survive.

Cows, sheep, and goats are like money to the Maasai. They use the animals to pay for what they need. If one is killed, life becomes harder for the herders. They may not be able to pay debts or pay for a wedding.

The Maasai are now worried about their livestock and their wealth. They have to do something. So they plan to kill the lioness. They place poison on the dead cow. If the lioness comes back to eat the cow, the poison will kill her.

The Maasai have always killed lions that prey on their livestock. Yet that is causing a problem. More people live in Kenya, so lions have less habitat. Less habitat means fewer lions.

Sometimes lions roam outside of protected parks. Then they come into conflict with the Maasai and other humans. The closer lions get to humans, the more dangers both face.

Herders kill lions to protect their livestock. Hunters kill them as trophies. Even diseases from domestic animals kill them. All of this is causing lions to die out, or become extinct.

That may seem surprising. After all, more than a million lions once roamed Earth. They wandered across large areas of Africa. They also lived in much of Asia and parts of Europe.

Today, lions are in real trouble. In the last few decades, their numbers have dropped by 80 percent.

Now lions live only in some parts of Africa and one part of India. Experts say that there may be only 20,000 lions left in the wild.

Lions are a top predator in Africa. This means that no other animal hunts them. Lions help keep a balance in their ecosystem. If they disappear, the entire ecosystem could change.

That's why National Geographic wants to protect lions. The Society gives money to people who have ideas that may help lions.

One such person is Anne Kent Taylor. Taylor owns a safari travel company. She was raised in Kenya and lives near the Maasai people. She wants to protect lions and Maasai livestock.

Taylor knows Maasai herders. She knows that they don't kill lions for fun. They kill lions to keep the big cats from killing their livestock.

Taylor also knows lions. She knows that lions don't kill livestock for fun. A lioness attacks livestock to feed her pride.

For many years, Taylor has watched the herders and the lions cause problems for each other. She cares deeply for both. She knew she needed to do something to help. Taylor started to think of ways to fix the problem.

The only way to keep both lions and livestock safe is to keep them apart. That's what the herders try to do with their bomas.

The herders make a boma by standing big, thorny branches next to one another. They tie the branches together to make a round pen. At night, the herders place their livestock in the pen. There, the animals can rest.

A boma may seem like a safe place. It isn't. Though a boma's branches are thorny, lions can still get past them. They use their claws to look for weaknesses in the wall. Sometimes they are able to simply leap over the branches.

Taylor studied the bomas. She spoke with herders and asked a lot of questions. Over time, she came up with a way for the herders to make their bomas stronger.

Thwack, thwack, thwack. Taylor watched as the herders put her idea into use. One of them hammered long nails into a boma branch. He had wrapped a wire fence around his boma. The nails would attach the wire to the branches.

The herders hoped that the new fence would better protect their animals. It would keep lions from clawing their way into the boma. It would also keep lions from climbing into the boma.

After finishing the fence, the herders waited. They watched as the sun set. It got darker and darker. Soon, hungry lions showed up.

The lions tried climbing over the new fence. They couldn't. They tried clawing their way through the new fence. They couldn't do that, either. Nothing the lions tried worked. Discouraged, they left to look for other prey.

Taylor knew she was on to something. She bought more wire fence. The news began to spread that putting a wire fence around a boma kept livestock safe. So more and more Maasai put wire fences around their bomas.

The wire fence kept lions out. It kept leopards, hyenas, and other predators out, too. Leopards often climb up a boma's branches and jump in. When herders added wire to their bomas, they noticed something. The leopards didn't seem to like the feel of the wire. Something about it spooks them and keeps them out.

The wire fencing also stopped the most destructive predator of all - hyenas. Taylor learned that hyenas kill 10 times as many livestock as lions do.

Hyenas can be sneaky. They often wait for lions and other predators to break into a boma. Then they come through the same opening. Now that lions can't break into the pens, hyenas can't either.

Sometimes the wire fence works even without a wooden boma behind it. For example, one herder made a boma for his goats and sheep in an open field. He couldn't find many trees. So to make the boma, he spaced out the few branches he did find. As a result, large areas of the pen were made up of only the wire fence.

At dusk, he moved his sheep and goats into the boma. When it grew late, he fell asleep. He did not sleep long, though. A loud sound woke him. His animals were making the noise. He jumped up and rushed to the field to find out what was happening.

When he got there, he saw a clan of hyenas charging toward the fence at top speed. Wham! Wham! As each hyena hit the wire fence, it fell to the ground.

The wild animals couldn't see the wire that made up the fence. They charged again and again. Each time, they slammed into the fence. Unable to attack the herd, the hyenas finally ran off. The sheep and goats were safe.

Taylor felt good. The wire fences seemed to be working. Lions had stopped eating the herders' livestock. The herders who had put wire fences around their bomas had stopped killing lions. Then something unexpected happened.

One morning, a herder went out to tend his goats and sheep only to find that they had been attacked. He had already placed a wire fence around his boma. It was clear that no lion, leopard, or hyena could have attacked the animals. He did not know what had happened. More importantly, he didn't know how to prevent it from happening again.

Taylor worried. She couldn't figure out what had happened. Then she made an important discovery at another boma. She saw a small animal trying to dig its way into a boma.

It was clear that the animal had been trying all night. The only thing that was stopping it from getting in was the wire fence. The bottom of the fence had been buried in the ground. The animal could not dig under it.

The animal was a honey badger. Honey badgers have long claws on their front feet. They use their claws to dig.

Taylor did not know honey badgers would attack livestock. She did some digging of her own. The herder whose sheep had been harmed had not buried his wire fence. It must have been a honey badger that killed his animals. It dug under the fence to get in.

Taylor warned the other herders. She told them to bury their wire fences. After that, no animals got through the protected bomas. Not even honey badgers.

Taylor's idea to put wire fences around bomas helps lions and herders. Both are better off today. Now the herders don't have to kill lions to protect their livestock.

That doesn't mean that lions are out of danger. In fact, the opposite is true. Many scientists fear that lions may die out. They're working to protect lions and other big cats.

Article by Joe Levit.