Old barbed wire fences are a major hindrance, and a leading cause of death, for elk and other wildlife in the West. Conservation groups and critter organizations have long worked to remove these derelict barriers where possible, and the Colorado Department of Transportation is finally playing a role, too. CDOT just issued its first-ever fence removal permit for wildlife in a state-owned right-of-way, according to 9News.
The project took place May 3. Volunteers removed fencing from a roughly six-mile stretch along Highway 74 in Evergreen, which is located amid the sprawling Front Range in a major migration corridor for elk and mule deer. CDOT’s first-of-its-kind permit went to a local group based in Evergreen, the Barbed Wire Warriors, whose mission revolves around mitigating wildlife-vehicle collisions in the area.
“I’ve been driving by this [fence] for about 30 years and it’s always been a thorn in my side,” Barbed Wire Warriors president and Evergreen resident Christie Green told CBS News at the fence-cutting event on Saturday.
That fence, now removed, used to stand in between the busy highway and Elk Meadows, an appropriately-named open space managed by Jefferson County that provides winter range for elk herds. On the other side of Highway 74, Green explained, sits a golf course and residential community, other areas favored by elk in the winter months. She said many of those elk would get tangled up and die trying to cross the old barbed wire fence, a remnant of an old cattle ranch there.
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Barbed Wire Warriors, along with other volunteer-led groups such as the Mule Deer Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, have been removing old barbed wire fences for years on private land with the permission of landowners, and on public lands with the permission of federal and state agencies. The Warriors’ newest project is the first one to take place along a state-owned right-of-way — in other words, a major highway corridor — in Colorado.
With an estimated 620,000 miles of old barbed wire criss-crossing the Western U.S., the group points out, there are plenty of other stretches of public roadway in Colorado and elsewhere where these old fences are killing wildlife and hampering migrations. A study cited by the Barbed Wire Warriors found that, on average, one tangled or dead elk or deer (or other ungulate) is found in every 2.5 miles of old barbed wire fencing. The same study found that the vast majority (around 90 percent) of those tangled critters are fawns.
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