This paper presents a new approach to assessing the costs of living with wildlife for people in developing countries. It uses villagers' willingness to pay (WTP) for technologies to deter wildlife - in this case, electric fencing - as a measure of damage costs from animal attacks. It employs a quantitative utility-theoretic approach to the estimation of village household WTP for deterrent programmes in two 'currencies': a household staple - maize - and cash.