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| Bode, M.; Wintle, B. | |
| How to Build an Efficient Conservation Fence | |
| 2010 Conservation Biology (24): 182-188 | |
Barriers are used to achieve diverse objectives in conservation and biosecurity. In conservation management, fences are often erected to exclude introduced predators and to contain diseased animals or invasive species. Planning an efficient conservation fence involves a number of decisions, including the size and design of the enclosure. We formulated the first general framework for building a fence that minimizes long-term management costs by balancing the expense of constructing a more secure barrier against the costs of coping with more frequent failures. The approach systematically considers the range of potential solutions to a well-defined fencing problem and results in a solution that maximizes conservation return on investment.We illustrated thismethod by designing efficient fences to address two different conservation goals: exclusion of invasive predators from populations of threatened eastern barred bandicoots (_Perameles gunnii_) and maintenance of isolated populations of healthy Tasmanian devils (_Sarcophilus harrisii_). A systematic approach to conservation fencing allows the best fence design to be chosen quantitatively and defensibly. It also facilitates conservation decisions at a strategic level by allowing fencing to be compared transparently with alternative conservation management actions. |
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