Mending Walls

Human activity is threatening the world's mass migrations. Fences are one of the culprits

The annual summer migration of the wildebeest across Africa's Serengeti is the longest and largest migration over land in the world. And in the United States, the migration of the American bison across the Northern Plains is pretty spectacular as well.

But according to a recent ScienceDaily.com story, a new study has found that these huge movements of herds in search of food are being curtailed by human activity.

The expansion of agriculture and hunting as well as a decrease in water availability are working against the world's great migrations. Even something as simple as a fence is a major obstacle.

"Fencing...blocks migratory routes and reduces migrant's access to forage and water," says the study's lead author Grant Harris of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History.

"Migrations can then stop, or be shortened, and animal numbers plummet."

In the 1914 poem "Mending Wall" by American poet Robert Frost, the speaker wonders why each spring, he and his neighbor must mend the stone wall that separates their farms. The neighbor simply states, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Whether or not that sentiment is true for humans, it's now clear that many hungry animals would strongly disagree.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Buffalo Field Campaign letter to President Obama urging him to take action to protect this American icon
• Make a tax-deductible donation to Earthjustice to help their court action to protect the bison
• Support the African Wildlife Foundation

RELATED POSTS

• Buffalo Soldier On (May 23, 2009)
• The Great Declination (April 30, 2009)
  
• Yellowstone Bison Get Help in Montana (April 30, 2008)
• Record Number of Yellowstone Bison Slaughtered (March 23, 2008)

image: Ngorongoro Wildebeest (credit: Schuyler Shepherd)