Wildlife friendly fence designs and elk fence crossing behavior

Fencing is a ubiquitous feature of our agricultural landscape. Fences necessarily have the potential to reduce habitat connectivity for resident ungulate populations. Unsuccessful fence crossings have the potential to cause injury or death to wildlife, as well as resulting in damage to the fence in terms of time and maintenance costs. Wildlife friendly fence designs may provide landowners and ungulate managers the opportunity to mitigate risks associated with wildlife crossings. Using remote cameras ( n = 12) along the perimeter fence of the Wainwright Dunes Ecological Reserve, Alberta, we quantified and compared elk crossing behaviors at standard 4 strand fences and gates as well as 3 strand fences and gates both with experimentally modified top and bottom strand heights. We found that wildlife friendly designs promoted behavioral options for elk of various demographic classes to cross fences. Our results suggest that the number of strands and the height of the top and bottom strand are important determinants for animals deciding to cross over, through, or under fences. While difficult or problematic crossings were primarily determined by how the individual crossed and made up a proportionally small number of crossings, the sheer volume of crossings we observed suggests that any modification which increases fence permeability to elk will likely result in less damage to fences and the crossing individuals.