What It Takes to Unfence the West

Barbed and wire fencing covers hundreds of thousands of miles of the American West. It is highly effective, and can be unsparing. It is also costly—”$15,000 per mile or more to replace,” Kylie Mohr writes, a devastating expense for any rancher who may’ve lost miles of boundary during a wildfire. Mohr’s feature on the dawn of virtual fencing is a stimulating history of manmade borders and the inexpert ways in which they are deployed; it’s also an optimistic bit of technology reporting on an innovation that may prove wildly beneficial for ranchers and their herds.

About 620,000 miles of barbed wire and other fencing crisscrosses the West like lattices on a pie crust of an imprecise baker, dividing land and life. These fences enable people to dictate how public and private lands are grazed and how, or even if, migrating wildlife reaches its final destination. They are sometimes more trouble than they are worth, though. Just ask the ranchers who build and repair them.  

“Real fence is bullshit,” Lanie White said as she programmed the collars stacked in the bed of a nearby ATV. “It’s expensive, it’s damaging, and it fragments ecosystems.”