Understanding Animal Behavior
Wildlife Fencing Matters.
Wildlife exclusion fencing has been used for many years to exclude and direct a multitude of species away from areas designated for construction, roads, utilities and other infrastructure needed to facilitate growing human populations. Along with many other factors wildlife fencing has been proven to be an eff ective mitigation tool for long and short-term projects. Unfortunately up until now the ambiguity surrounding what fencing materials and installation methods are most effective has led to millions of dollars being misspent and countless animals ineff ectively protected.
To help improve our collective approach we have compiled a comprehensive wildlife fencing handbook that you can trust and utilize on any future projects to help usher us into a new era of wildlife protection. Knowledge of how animals interact with their environment is imperative to the success of any mitigation or management measures and this is especially important when it comes to fencing. Too often fence design and material choice is made based on what is cheap and available rather than selecting solutions that are specifically designed for use with wildlife.
Understanding animal behavior.
Scientific studies on the effectiveness of mitigation measures often look at projects on a large impact and landscape scale. These studies frequently assess effectiveness of mitigation by counting animal carcasses before and after installation culminating in overall impact assessments on mortality rate changes. Very rarely do these studies go further to assess if the choice of fencing materials used could have an even greater influence on mitigation effectiveness by altering animal behavior. The chosen fencing material may put animals at a higher risk or positively improve the frequency of safe crossings or capture rates, based on how the animals interact with the fence.
Growing amounts of anecdotal observations of animals pacing, climbing and becoming stuck in fencing has led scientists to begin researching what happens when animals come into contact with these barriers. The aim is to gain a better understanding of what materials and designs are the least harmful and most effective. It is this research that has informed this handbook and inspired us to create a detailed range of fencing designs that can be confidently applied to any situation.
Although every species of animal has its own unique biological traits and therefore will interact with fences in different ways, it is agreed that the following factors are common across all animal groups and considered the highest risk factors when using fencing.