Pronghorns are the fastest land animal in the Western Hemisphere and undertake some of the longest land migrations in North America, but agricultural fencing has fragmented their routes, causing suffering, population decline, and increased mortality during harsh winters.
Fencing creates genuine welfare harms for pronghorns in two ways. First, animals that attempt to cross fences can become entangled in barbed wire, suffering lacerations, stress, and death from entanglement or from inability to escape predators. Second, the blocking of migration routes forces pronghorns to remain in areas that cannot sustain them through winter, leading to starvation, weakening, and increased predation mortality. The relatively simple intervention of modifying fence bottom strands to allow pronghorn passage can dramatically reduce these harms at low cost. Wildlife-friendly fencing is one of the most cost-effective welfare and conservation interventions available in the American West.