“Barbed wire sucks!” Pat Todd shouted, frustrated as she untangled spools of the material on a private ranch in the Madison Valley on a windy, late-August day.
A Yellowstone connectivity program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association, Todd handles a lot of the sharp, metal wire. The more than 16,000 miles of barbed-wire fencing in Greater Yellowstone is a major problem for wildlife connectivity, she said.
There’s no central tracking for how much fence has been replaced across Montana. But since 2010, her organization has enlisted approximately 1,700 volunteers to help modify or remove 93 miles of fencing for more than 40 separate landowners, including projects on both federal and state public land.
Tackling every single barrier to wildlife movement across the landscape just isn’t feasible, Todd said. But that’s where this particular project comes in.
“The park is not an island,” Todd said as she welcomed volunteers to a fence-removal project at the Durham Ranch, roughly 30 miles northeast of the Yellowstone boundary. “The wildlife have no idea where the park ends and the private lands start.”
NPCA uses state wildlife data along with anecdotal accounts from landowners to prioritize where removing and modifying fencing can have the greatest impact. The Madison Valley provides crucial habitat for both elk and pronghorn as they migrate across the landscape. It’s also home to mule deer and predators like grizzly bears and wolves.
Ranch owner Todd Durham said the property is loaded with wildlife. “You guys probably saw some antelope yesterday,” he told the volunteers. “They’re here all the time, in and out.”
But for Durham, the problem was fence maintenance. “It’s getting tougher and tougher to get that fence fixed to keep cows in,” he said.
Wildlife-friendly fencing offered a solution for both his own livestock and the wildlife that also use his land. Wildlife need permeability on the landscape, Todd said, and barbed wire fragments habitat. Pronghorn, the fastest land mammal in North America, suffer some of the worst impacts. Collar data show they pace back and forth along fencelines until they can find a place to crawl under.
“They’re not anatomically meant to jump,” Todd said.
Elk, on the other hand, jump over fencing and often destroy infrastructure in the process. Landowners describe constant headaches as they face the need to fix fences time and again.
At the Durham Ranch, volunteers pulled barbed wire from fence posts. They spooled the wire and gathered it to recycle or dispose of. Later, contractors, along with some additional volunteer help, will arrive to rebuild the infrastructure with wildlife movement in mind.
In the Madison Valley, “Targeted Implementation Plan” funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, is available through the year 2030 for wildlife-friendly and even virtual fencing, which uses GPS-enabled collars to control livestock movement across a mostly fence-free landscape. The Durham project was able to leverage that NRCS funding.
Todd also works with landowners to acquire funding from NPCA, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Mule Deer Foundation and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
The cost of wildlife-friendly fencing varies wildly, Todd said, but a four-strand fence typically runs roughly $3.50 to $4.50 per foot. In steep, rugged terrain, that can jump to $7.
The costs add up quickly. But so can the benefits to wildlife. Todd said a historic pronghorn migration route out of Yellowstone once extended into the Madison Valley. Data from biologists tracking the species indicate they no longer make that long journey, likely due to barriers such as roads and fencing. But that could change.
“We’re hoping to restore and bring back that genetic memory so they can access more habitat,” Todd said.
The consequences of traditional barbed-wire fencing can be deadly. Studies have found that each year about one ungulate dies for every two-and-a-half miles of barbed-wire fence. Elk and pronghorn can get tangled up in the upper strands of wire. Even more animals suffer stress, infection and sometimes death from exhaustion and lesions from navigating the more than 600,000 miles of barbed wire segmenting the West.
Climate change adds another reason animals need to be able to move. “There’s times that are drier, there’s more extreme weather events coming through,” Todd said. “And because of that, animals are going to need to move more than ever in order to adapt to those changing conditions.”
Becky Ward of Bozeman, a former ranch owner herself, began volunteering on fencing projects more than a decade ago. “We’ve done way too much to barricade animals,” she said as she freed barbed wire from a fence post. “Seeing deer, elk, antelope, sheep caught in fences. That does it to your heart. You just go ‘I have to help with this.’”
The improvements to habitat aren’t just theoretical. A pronghorn herd that summers in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley numbered around 200 individuals in the early 2000s, Todd said. Due to fencing, the herd couldn’t access adequate winter forage in Paradise Valley north of the park. After more than 1,000 volunteers removed and modified fences on both public and private land, the pronghorn had more access to the food it needed to survive. Today, the herd’s numbers have more than doubled.
Sometimes, including here on the Durham Ranch, the solution involves removing and rebuilding an entire fenceline. Other times, relatively simple modifications can make a significant difference. Historically, barbed-wire fences have featured a bottom-most strand of barbed wire six to 10 inches from the ground. Woven-wire fences can be even worse, with little to no gap between the fence and the soil. Wildlife-friendly fencing, on the other hand, features a smooth wire 16-18 inches from the earth, allowing pronghorn to slide relatively effortlessly underneath.
Upper strands should be 38-42 inches from the ground, giving elk enough clearance to jump over, according to Todd. The top two strands should also be separated by at least a foot. “If they’re closer together,” Todd said, “the animal can get their leg caught in between the strands, and it’ll twist around it.”
But fencing projects don’t always involve an overhaul. The NPCA tries to meet landowners where they’re at, according to Todd. Sometimes even modest modifications like installing strategic “X-shaped” gates in the fence can give pronghorn easy passage when operations and finances don’t allow the construction of an entirely new fenceline.
“It’s an expensive endeavor,” said Teelyn Durham, a flight paramedic who still returns home to help on the ranch. He said another fence project on the family’s Forest Service allotment near Papoose Creek, home to abundant elk along with their cattle in the summer, served as proof of concept. “We didn’t have a single broken wire on the whole fence, which has never happened before. It’s a win-win for us.”
All told, roughly six to eight miles of fence are set to be replaced on the ranch over the next four years, Durham said. It wasn’t always easy.
Growing up on the ranch, Durham recalled his family fighting with the Forest Service for resources. “I just thought that’s the way it is,” he said. “There’s a divide between ranchers and the Forest Service and the public and outdoors-people.”
But fencing efforts on the ranch were a collaborative effort between nonprofits, public volunteers and the federal government. And he was blown away by the results.
“It’s been incredibly eye-opening and almost a relief,” Durham said. “We’re not trying to do this on our own. We’re all in this together. That has been huge for me and for our family. We’ve been able to get projects done that I don’t think would be possible just us trying to do it on our own.”
Still, fencing efforts can’t happen in a vacuum, Todd said. At the same time vast stretches of fencing need removal or modification, landowners and public lands agencies need to restore riparian habitat and address encroaching invasive species. Land protections like habitat leases and conservation easements can also help secure wildlife corridors for the future.
Roads are another barrier. Todd is also helping organize Madison Safe Passages, an initiative aimed at installing wildlife-crossing structures in the valley.
“If we fragment the landscape, we can do wildlife-friendly fencing all day long,” Todd said. “But we won’t have connected populations.”
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers was incorrectly identified as a funder of fencing projects in the Madison Valley. The correct organization is Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Mike Wilkinson was also identified in a photo as Dave Brammer in the earlier version. Both mistakes have been corrected.
