In the springtime, wildlife young are usually close on the heels of their mother, trying to get to the other side of a road. A single car can send them bolting back the way they came. And if that road is lined with a barrier fence, the trailing young may get stranded or trapped in the wires. This could be its first fence.

If you are driving a country road, try to slow down or stop, and give the animals time to negotiate the fencing. If fences are wired particularly close to the ground or tightly spaced together, the young can get stuck.

According the Jim Roscoe, High Divide Program Coordinator, “It’s not uncommon to see small nursery herds of elk with all the cows on one side of the fence and all the calves on the other side.”

Away from a roadway, in a place without pressure, little ones can figure out how to wriggle under, over or through a fence to follow their mother. But even “wildlife-friendly” fences are meant to keep big animals on one side or the other. And in late spring, when elk are on the move to summer habitat through public and private lands crisscrossed with fencing, calves are at risk of being left behind or entangled.