What do you think is the most common form of human infrastructure in the world? Not only does it cover vast tracts of the earth’s surface, but it is also virtually invisible. Worldwide, our wild lands are laced with countless stretches of fences.
The total length of all fencing around the globe is 10 times greater than the total length of roads. If our planet’s fences were stretched end to end, they would likely bridge the distance from Earth to the Sun multiple times.
From the western United States to Mongolia to Africa, fences are going up rapidly as border barriers and livestock farming increase. On every continent, from cities to rural areas and from ancient to modern times, humans have built fences. But we know almost nothing about their ecological effects..
There has been more interest recently in a new discipline: fence ecology that is revealing a world that has been utterly reorganized by a rapidly growing latticework of fences.
Now, a growing number of studies are exposing the impact of these fences, from impeding wildlife migrations to increasing the genetic isolation of threatened species. Listen in and find out what you can do about it.
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