Fences Cause "Ecological Meltdown

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Dont fence me in!

Study in Journal Science Says: fences can cause ecological meltdown of wildlife

Newswise NEW YORK (Embargoed Not for release until 14:00 EST 3 April 2014) Wildlife fences are constructed for a variety of reasons including to prevent the spread of diseases, protect wildlife from poachers, and to help manage small populations of threatened species. Humanwildlife conflict is another common reason for building fences: Wildlife can damage valuable livestock, crops, or infrastructure, some species carry diseases of agricultural concern, and a few threaten human lives. At the same time, people kill wild animals for food, trade, or to defend lives or property, and human activities degrade wildlife habitat. Separating people and wildlife by fencing can appear to be a mutually benecial way to avoid such detrimental effects. But in a paper in the journal Science, published today, April 4th, 2014, WCS and ZSL scientists review the pros and cons of large scale fencing and argue that fencing should often be a last resort.

Although fencing can have conservation benefits, it also has costs. When areas of contiguous wildlife habitat are converted into islands, the resulting small and isolated populations are prone to extinction, and the resulting loss of predators and other larger-bodied species can affect interactions between species in ways that cause further local extinctions, a process which has been termed ecological meltdown.

In some parts of the world, fencing is part of the culture of wildlife conservation its assumed that all wildlife areas have to be fenced. But fencing profoundly alters ecosystems, and can cause some species to disappear. Were asking that conservationists as well as other sectoral interests carefully weigh up the biodiversity costs and benefits of new and existing fences, said ZSLs Rosie Woodroffe, lead author of the study.

In addition to their ecosystem-wide impact, fences do not always achieve their specific aims. Construction of fences to reduce humanwildlife conflict has been successful in some places but the challenges of appropriate fence design, location, construction, and maintenance mean that fences often fail to deliver the anticipated benefits. Ironically, in some places, fences also provide poachers with a ready supply of wire for making snares.

Co-author Simon Hedges of WCS said: A variety of alternative approaches including better animal husbandry, community-based crop-guarding, insurance schemes, and wildlife-sensitive land-use planning can be used to mitigate conicts between people and wildlife without the need for fencing. WCS projects working with local people and government agencies have shown that humanelephant conflict can be dramatically reduced without using fences in countries as different as Indonesia and Tanzania.

Co-author Sarah Durant of ZSLs said, An increased awareness of the damage caused by fencing is leading to movements to remove fences instead of building more. Increasingly, fencing is seen as backwards step in conservation.

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Fences Cause "Ecological Meltdown