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Outdoor Corner: Fences and wildlife, a lethal combination
Gene Plihal
for Smoky River Express
A profundity which I heard and couldn’t pass up from inclusion in my weekly article came from a recent “Nature of Things” broadcast: “Everything we do to land, trees, water and air will affect hundreds of generations in the future.” I know it comes from David Suzuki and “Suzuki” these days is held by some in the same regard as “Toyota”. Regardless of what you think of Suzuki the scientist or Suzuki the vehicle, everything we do or don’t do will affect people and life down the road.
So, you’re asking, where do fences fit into all of this? Well, admittedly, I never thought about it all when I was a young cow hand building fences on my dad’s pasture or on my own pasture in the late 90s or this decade for that matter. Fences are fences and they are there to keep the cows off the road and out of the corn, bean or wheat fields. Not until I read a recent article from a Montana management publication on barbed wire fences did I really realize the effect of these fences on wildlife. On average, Montana officials found one dead animal for every 1.2 miles of barbed wire fence after a tough winter. The animals, pictorially illustrated in the article, got tangled in the wire or simply died, in the case of fawns and elk calves, after a futile effort to follow the mother across the fence. Many calves and fawns were found dead curled up in a fetal position next to the fences. Frankly, these pictures are too graphic for me to even include in this article.
Building fences for me has and always will be kind of an antidote for Robert Frost who poetically lambasted fence builders by asking, if I may take poetic license and roughly paraphrase, What is it that we are fencing in or out?
I, like most owners or lease holders of pasture land, build the fence to last, complete with railroad ties dug in four feet for corner posts and brace posts all set in concrete. And then, five strands of barbed wire, on private land, tightened like a fiddle string with steel “T” posts interspersed with wooden posts every 15 feet. Then, even if a wire breaks, you can rest easy on holidays that the other four will hold the livestock in.
So when my family and I took on the latest fence building project, a 320 acre grazing lease, we took off with the same zeal. Whoa! What’s all this stuff about wildlife friendly fences?
Funny thing about moose. They respect no fence. While deer, elk and such may get hung up and ultimately die on a fence, bull moose particularly, will alter even the best built fence to his satisfaction.
So, while my South Dakota land and fencing isn’t affected by bull moose, (heck, even the buffalo are all gone), all fences, regardless of location affect deer, elk and other game. So, regardless of where you’re building fences, what’s the solution to the fence/wildlife conundrum? There is no panacea but allow me to use pictures to illustrate some ways fences may become somewhat wildlife friendly.
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