In terms of wild animal welfare, I felt frighted when I’ve first seen the extent of using barbed fence in Central America (and probably American continent in general, I assume). There were published several field studies mainly from Australia, in which authors tried to evaluate harmfulness of barbed fence on wild animal health and results were relatively sound. It came especially bad for big mammals such as kangaroos, dogs etc. and winged mammals such as bats and flying foxes. Personaly, I’ve seen couple dogs in Costa Rica with damaged eyes and cut injuries on the body. The barbed fence could had been the cause.
Because extend of using barbed fence in Central America is vast and apparently preference for using it is deeply rooted into the culture of locals (on the rural and even small cities majority of people use barbed fence as a common way to demarcate their property), eradication of this custom and agency for replacement for more compasionate version of fence to wildlife, will be a longterm project. It almost certainly won’t happen in a few years. And ultimately I would love to see the change in policy of using barbed fence worldwide, not just in the Americas.
In terms of wild animal welfare, I felt frighted when I’ve first seen the extent of using barbed fence in Central America (and probably American continent in general, I assume). There were published several field studies mainly from Australia, in which authors tried to evaluate harmfulness of barbed fence on wild animal health and results were relatively sound. It came especially bad for big mammals such as kangaroos, dogs etc. and winged mammals such as bats and flying foxes. Personaly, I’ve seen couple dogs in Costa Rica with damaged eyes and cut injuries on the body. The barbed fence could had been the cause.
Because extend of using barbed fence in Central America is vast and apparently preference for using it is deeply rooted into the culture of locals (on the rural and even small cities majority of people use barbed fence as a common way to demarcate their property), eradication of this custom and agency for replacement for more compasionate version of fence to wildlife, will be a longterm project. It almost certainly won’t happen in a few years. And ultimately I would love to see the change in policy of using barbed fence worldwide, not just in the Americas.