Puddock Hill Journal #8: Deer Fences and Consequences
A couple months ago, I came across an article published by the Yale School of the Environment on “How the Boom in Fences Is Harming Wildlife.” While the article focused mostly on expansive fences disrupting large landscapes such as the desert at our southern border, the Mongolian steppes, and the Greater Mara region of East Africa, it struck home because we installed a deer fence two autumns ago around most of our property.
The Yale article references a 2020 study that found both expected and unexpected effects of fencing, from disrupted migration of large mammals such as wildebeests and mule deer to the conclusion that fences lead to decreased insect abundance.
That impact on insects caught me by surprise. It turns out fences create more places for spiders to build their webs, and more webs means fewer flying insects. Another, perhaps more predicable, impact involves increased disease transmission resulting from “concentrating animals more closely together than they might be in the wild.” As usual, beware unintended consequences.
When Robert Frost, in his poem “Mending Wall,” famously wrote that “Good fences make good neighbors,” he had in mind people neighbors, of course, but the narrator also teasingly wonders: