A year ago Summit County’s resource manager had miles of barbed and smooth wire fencing installed on the 910 Ranch, which the county has under lease. The taut fence is strung along a shallow stream, at the bottom of steep game trails. It is hazardous to wildlife.
The wire fence does not meet Division of Wildlife’s specifications for wildlife safe fencing due to the fact that the top wire is not tabbed along the full length of the fence.
Absent proper tabbing, elk, deer and raptors blind to the wire are hung up, can strangle and die. Small calves and fawns caught between the top and barbed middle wire suffer needlessly and risk certain death. These concerns were brought to the county’s attention last summer.
Left on the ranch are some rusted barbwire nests from failed fences in the past, evidence that expensive wire fencing is foolhardy.
County representatives and the resource manager were advised how heavy snows, muscular bulls and determined wildlife would bust down their wire and buck and rail fencing. Predictably, county crews spent this summer repairing their broken fences.
That Summit County, charged with the stewardship of the ranch and its wild inhabitants, dismissed repeated requests to address the inadequacies of their dangerous fencing, is untenable.
Now inviting volunteers for a county-sponsored “Barbwire Pull” to remove old, discarded barb wire while facing the county’s dangerously strung barbwire fence is beyond ironic. It’s disingenuous, mismanaged conservation.
Leslie Miller
Midway