Back to StoriesRestoring Wildlife Connectivity Across the High Divide
August 29, 2024
Restoring Wildlife Connectivity Across the High DivideThroughout the High Divide, century-old fencing is coming down to improve migration corridors for pronghorn, elk and other wildlife
Much of the southwest Montana landscape is still largely intact, making it an obvious area for a focused conservation effort and bringing together a coalition of agencies, nonprofits, landowners and recreation groups known as the Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership. Photo courtesy Montana Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Collin Peterson as wildlife program coordinator with the National Wildlife Federation. Peterson is the wildlife project coordinator. Additionally, the article has been updated to reflect that NWF has now removed or replaced 40 miles of fencing with wildlife friendly fence as opposed to 25 miles.
by David
Tucker
When it
comes to charismatic megafauna, the Northern Rockies are the envy of the nation.
Sitting today on the sagebrush hillsides of the High Divide—a vast land mass straddling
the border of southwest Montana and southeastern Idaho—a Shoshone hunter would find himself right at home among the elk, deer,
pronghorn and moose. However, one feature that would be quite foreign is the barbed wire fencing that crisscrosses the
landscape, fragmenting otherwise ideal wildlife habitat.
These
obstacles are especially cumbersome for migrating ungulates, and while fencing
isn’t inherently a problem for their seasonal journeys, in its current
condition, it can be deadly.
“Southwest
Montana has a high density of pretty impermeable fencing,” Simon Buzzard, a
wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Federation, told Mountain
Journal. “Which comes from a legacy of sheep ranching and hasn’t really
changed in 100 years.”
These woven-wire
fences are particularly challenging for pronghorn because the bottom wire
contacts the ground and the species doesn’t jump well, causing them to spend
valuable energy and time looking for gaps instead of foraging.
“We’re
using pronghorn as the focal species, but recognizing that there are benefits
to other species like mule deer, moose and elk,” Buzzard added.
For
millennia, migration has been key to survival and the same is true today. The
difference is now species must deal with the additional pressures applied by an
ever-expanding human presence.
“You can’t
help but note these extreme changing patterns in climate,” said NWF Wildlife Project Coordinator Collin Peterson. “Hotter summers, shorter winters. All of that is contributing
to decreased quality of forage and availability of water, and we have this
increasing footprint of human development, barriers to movement that have an
amplifying effect on all these other stressors.”
"There’s an emotional response when you see a calf elk stuck on the other side of a fence and its mother is pacing and they’re separated by this physical barrier.” – Collin Peterson, Wildlife Project Coordinator, National Wildlife Federation
Despite this
recent development, much of the southwest Montana landscape is still largely
intact, making it an obvious area for a focused conservation effort and bringing
together a coalition of agencies, nonprofits, landowners and recreation groups
known as the Southwest Montana Sagebrush
Partnership.
Movements of collared adult female pronghorn (colored by individual) in the Big Hole study area for the Montana Pronghorn Movement and Population Ecology Project from January 2020 to June 2023. Map courtesy Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
“In the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem and adjacent High Divide, there’s some of the most intact
ecosystems of ungulates left in the world and they undergo these phenomenal
migrations because of the extreme diversity of the landscape,” Peterson explained.
“Being proactive and prioritizing these landscapes that still retain a lot of
that ecological integrity is an effective strategy for conservation.”
Given this
high level of ecological integrity, support has come from the top down and the
bottom up, an enviable combination setting the project up for success. At the
federal level, the Department of the Interior issued Secretarial Order 3362 in 2018, calling on agencies to improve
habitat quality for big-game species in the West. Subsequently, the Bureau of
Land Management identified the High Divide as one of 21 priority landscapes,
allocating almost $10 million from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law to restoration and resilience efforts in the region. At the USDA,
the Migratory Big Game Initiative, which started in Wyoming, provides
additional funds landowners can access to pay for fencing improvements. After a
successful pilot, the program was expanded to Montana and Idaho, adding another
piece to the funding pie.
In the
field, the National Wildlife Federation and their partners have removed 40 miles of fencing in the High Divide since work began in 2021, and they’ve been
busy this summer adding to that total. “The goal is to make a proof of concept
in Beaverhead County, demonstrating how this can work,” Buzzard said, referring
to the largest county by area in Montana, which shares a border with Idaho
along the Continental Divide. “We’re one example, but we’re seeing this
happening across different landscapes.”
That
includes other critical corridors adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. On the
Beartooth Front, there’s the Absaroka
Fence Initiative. In
Sublette County, Wyoming, more than 700 miles of fencing has been removed or
improved since 2017, showing how the effort can scale with the right resources
in place.
While there’s
significant buy-in from the feds and technical know-how from the NGOs, success
in many cases depends on the trust of private landowners and the capacity of
volunteers. “Most of the landowners we work with really want to prioritize
conservation of wildlife,” Peterson said, “but have this reality where their
livelihood and the economic viability of this community depends on livestock.
These fences are a solution that satisfies both of those things.”
On a
40,000-acre ranch southwest of Dillon, ranch manager Colton Clarno is molding
the program to his specific needs. Instead of a one-size-fits-all solution, the
initiative is flexible enough to serve the diverse realities across this
sprawling landscape.
“I can put
a twist on things that benefit the ranch a lot,” Clarno said. “We did a
4.5-mile project that cost us $1,800. Nobody can build fence for that price, so
financially it makes excellent sense.”
Initially,
Clarno was skeptical because the wildlife-friendly fencing isn’t designed to
hold cattle, but he converted after seeing wildlife pass through without
causing any damage. “These fences allow the wildlife and game to travel more
freely, so what I have noticed is that the maintenance is way down,” he
explained. “The elk and deer can go over them freely, and the antelope and
babies can go under.” On net, Clarno is coming out on top financially, and the
wildlife are benefiting, too. “We want to make sure Mother Nature’s taken care
of as well, because we destroy that and obviously it hurts us.”
With the
funding in place and the landowners on board, the last piece of the puzzle is
the volunteer workforce. Their time and energy bring scale and efficiency, but
also highlight a shared passion for the landscape and a desire to protect and
improve it.
“You can
see this immediate impact when you remove these barriers that so obviously
contrast with the rest of this landscape,” Peterson said. “And there’s an
emotional response when you see a calf elk stuck on the other side of a fence
and its mother is pacing and they’re separated by this physical barrier.”
The National Wildlife Federation and their partners have removed 25 miles of fencing in the High Divide since work began in 2021. Photo courtesy Montana Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
Removing
that physical barrier is a tangible action, and bit by bit, mile by mile, the benefits
are starting to add up.
“We may
not see the impacts of our attempts to restore or conserve landscapes, but they’re
slow and subtle over time and culminate to some really impressive change,” Peterson
said. “It’s good for those folks that consider themselves stewards of the
environment to appreciate the hardships animals go through and to remain
optimistic about how much of a positive impact we can have.”
With the
headlines focused on everything we’re losing, the Southwest Montana Sagebrush
Partnership is choosing instead to highlight what we still have. By taking a
holistic, landscape-scale approach, they’re connecting federal dollars to local
landowners, and passionate volunteers to impactful projects.
As the old
fences come down, ancient corridors are restored, and a better balance is
struck.
Email
Collin Peterson at PetersonC@nwf.org for
information about volunteering
on a fence-removal project.
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