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Project eliminates miles of barbed-wire hazards for Jackson Hole’s wildlife.
Tall fences may or may not make good neighbors, but removing them can definitely be beneficial to migrating wildlife.
During Chuck Schneebeck’s youth on a ranch in Colorado, he developed such an aversion to fence construction and repair that he spent five years of his life getting even. “I can remember building fence and fixing fence, and building fence and fixing fence—so taking it down became a real joy,” says Schneebeck, who, along with his wife Carol, coordinated the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation Fence Removal Project from 2002 to 2006.
During that time, the couple oversaw the removal of about eighty miles of fence. “We spent an awful lot of time working on the project,” he says. “You have to get a lot of permissions and, if it isn’t organized ... it isn’t very productive.”
The Schneebecks’ passion for fence removal goes beyond Chuck’s grudge against childhood chores. Fences are bad for wildlife, and removing them enhances the wildlife corridors that help make Jackson Hole North America’s own Serengeti.
“Well-maintained fences can be hard on wildlife, but poorly maintained fences can be devastating,” says Schneebeck. “There’s an awful lot of wildlife that dies on a barbed wire fence. They can just hang there and die. It’s a long and torturous death for them.”
According to Steve Kilpatrick, a habitat biologist who has helped with the fence removal project, animals often get trapped in the top two strands of a barbed wire fence. “They get their hind feet stuck between the top wire and the second wire down,” says Kilpatrick, who also works for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “They get that half-twist and the barbs dig in and it twists around their legs.”
According to Schneebeck, it’s not uncommon for animals to cross a given fence multiple times each year. “There are some leftover fences that are out and about in our community,” he says. “By removing them, we are living more compatibly with our wildlife.”
For instance, a pair of fences used to run along either side of the road from Gros Ventre Junction to Kelly. Those fences, Schneebeck says, impeded the movement of wildlife, especially elk, from Grand Teton National Park to the National Elk Refuge. “For all practical purposes, it was right on the edge of the wildlife refuge. It was hard for the animals to miss it. Sometimes we would find carcasses along the fence.”
After the Blacktail Butte fire burned many of the wooden fence posts, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation Fence Removal Project organized sixty people who, over two days in the summer of 2003, took down the three to four miles of fence. “Now people go there and it feels like a park,” Schneebeck says.
Aside from the benefits to wildlife, fence removals have become a sort of rallying point for those at different ends of Jackson Hole’s political spectrum. Take, for example, the fence from Moosehead Ranch to the Blackrock grazing allotment. Community members bought out the grazing allotment because of predator conflicts with livestock. Later, environmentalists, ranchers, and outfitters joined together to remove thirty miles of fence in the summer of 2004.
“We had all kinds of folks who don’t always get along—and afterwards, we all got together and had a big party,” Schneebeck says. “It really did bring together a lot of people who had one thing in common: they cared about the wildlife.”’
Schneebeck also points to the owners of the Red Rock Ranch, who allowed the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation to remove the bottom layer of barbed wire and replace it with smooth wire, making it easier for pronghorn to negotiate. In another instance, local Boy Scouts helped remove ten miles of fence in the Gros Ventre.
Humans do a lot of things to fragment habitat, Kilpatrick says. “This is one way they’ve got to give it back.”
