Fences are very important and have been a huge part of this landscape for a really long time and many of them are still important and being used, and there are a lot of them that aren't being used anymore.

There's sort of this dance between keeping fences that are important but making sure wildlife can get through them, and getting rid of fences that people don't need anymore.

The Absaroka Fence Initiative is working to modify and remove fences to help wildlife have an easier time moving across the landscape.

I kind of think of it like when you're hiking and you come across a tree that's fallen over the trail and you're like, “Oh, great, I have to navigate this tree.” And you go around it and like, it's fine.

But if you're going through like deadfall forest, it's not fine.

And we're increasingly realizing that these wildlife are encounte so many fences as they move across the landscape and their migration.

Sometimes fences are easy to navigate, and sometimes they aren't, so it can separate calves and mothers, it can trip animals up and injure or even kill them.

And it can take a lot of energy in the winter to try and get around fences while navigating through snow.

Fences are very expensive to take down or modify or rebuild, so they need to be able to focus their resources and efforts into the places where their work's going to make the most difference on the ground.

So today we're surveying a fence for wildlife migration, so we're looking for wildlife crossings and what features the fence has.

So if it has stays, if there's any braces, how many wires it has, if there's a smooth wire on the bottom or not.

The inventory project is an attempt to map and measure as many fences as we can across the Absaroka front, which is sort of the eastern end of the Yellowstone ecosystem.

It's a really important area for migratory animals that move in and out of the park And those animals encounter a bunch of fences.

So right now I'm surveying this brace, which is a double brace in fair condition.

There are different types of braces.

So this one here is essentially two H-braces that are together.

And so that is what we call a double brace.

And we almost always take photos of every point.

So make sure folks that arent in the field every day can see what we're looking at after the data is collected And we collect points along a line.

So we collect wildlife crossings, braces and gates and cattle guards.

And then we also create a line that tells us where the fence is going.

At some point before you do a fence project, someone is going to have to walk that whole thing, and it just takes time.

And so to be able to have a fence inventory crew that's out and already getting all that data for us, it not just saves time, it makes projects that probably wouldn't have been possible, possible.

Because we're not spending our time walking the fence line.

We've been just so fortunate to have Kristen and the Beyond Yellowstone crew come on board and take care of the inventory, because without that, how do we know where the fences are?

But when we can merge that data with the collar data from Game and Fish and really know where these animals are in most critical need of assistance, it makes our job a lot easier.

In general, pronghorn go under fences.

They're not built for jumping.

They're built for speed.

Their legs break easily.

They're really skinny legs, so it's safer and easier for them to scoot underneath the fence.

Elk- pretty easy for them to clear a fence and they're bigger, so it's harder for them to get under.

Young elk, when they're yearlings or calves, want to go under.

So you need a fence that can kind of do both to accommodate the different life stages.

Looking here along this fence for finding some hair today.

This is older hair from a pronghorn.

And this is definitely an area where, a pronghorn crossed and maybe got stuck or maybe, maybe died.

Hard to say if it was a carcass or anything like that, but definitely a lot of hair here, so you can see that a pronghorn crossed through here at one point.

For this year, this is our third volunteer project.

Up until this point for AFI, we've done about 18 miles removed of fencing in our area.

And 29 modified.

It's not a fast process, so it's great that today we can modify 1.5 miles of fence.

But when we talk about thousands of miles of fence across Wyoming the rate of improvement isn't kind of what it needs to be.

So that's where AFI is really moving into contracted fence work.

It's not cheap to modify fences, but with this Carter Mountain Pronghorn project, we just got funding to contract out 20 miles of fence that would be done in two years.

The day went great.

We finished up.

It's now a four wire fence.

There used to be five wires with the top at 49 and now the top is 40, which is better for elk to jump over.

And our bottom wire we raised up and it's smooth so our pronghorn can go under it easier and not get caught in the barbs.

It's just nice to do something that you can actual see tangible outcomes from, and that matters.

And that at the same time is also helpful for science and research.

Because I am a researcher and I- all I want to do is just test hypotheses all day to be honest with you.

And it's really powerful to me to be able to collect data that informs a broad scientific ecological questions, and that also informs direct boots on the ground action.

Like, that's just I can't think of anything that could be more rewarding to do, to be honest.