Pronghorns are North America's fastest land animal — their welfare depends on open grassland connectivity and freedom from fencing barriers.
Pronghorn welfare is defined by connectivity. These animals evolved for long-distance seasonal migration across open grasslands, and the welfare cost of barriers to that movement is not merely ecological but individual: animals that cannot access seasonal forage face nutritional stress, animals that cannot reach traditional mating grounds experience reproductive failure, and animals that exhaust themselves attempting to find gaps in impermeable fencing suffer from physiological stress. The simple modification of raising bottom fence wires from 30 cm to 45 cm can restore pronghorn passage without compromising livestock containment — a low-cost intervention with significant welfare and conservation benefits.