Barbed Wire: A Silent Killer of Aussie Wildlife
- Gregory Andrews
- Oct 13
- 2 min read
Yesterday on my way to #CitSciOz25 in Melbourne, I cycled past a Defence facility near Seymour in Victoria. I found this sugar glider hanging dead and desiccated from the top strand of barbed wire. It would have clipped the fence on a night glide and then suffered for hours - perhaps days - before dying. It’s heartbreaking. It’s common. And it’s preventable.
Researchers have long documented sugar and squirrel gliders caught on barbed wire in roadside vegetation, including just up the road near Euroa - hard evidence that gliding marsupials are especially vulnerable where habitat and fence lines meet. Community wildlife groups and land agencies report the same pattern nationwide: more than 60–75 native species are recorded as fence victims, particularly - bats, gliders, owls, koalas, kangaroos and emus. Some estimates suggest hundreds of thousands of Aussie animals die on barbed wire every year across roughly 10 million kilometres of fencing.
The fixes are simple, cheap and proven. Local Land Services and WIRES recommend replacing the top two barbed strands with plain or “sighter” wire, slightly loosening the bottom wire to allow small fauna through, and removing redundant fencing. The NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust’s conservation fencing guide says what we can all see with our own eyes: flying and gliding animals get entangled and die; good design prevents it.
The good news is there are positives to build on. The Biodiversity Conservation Trust partners with landholders and funds practical works like wildlife-friendly fencing through stewardship agreements and grants. Terrain NRM and Landcare networks also have current, plain-English how-tos for landholders wanting to know more. These are “quick wins” for biodiversity and agriculture alike.
And the Department of Defence? Well, it does have an Environmental Strategy and Environment & Heritage Manual that commit managing environmental impacts. But I’d recommend that it audit fence risks on all its bases, remove redundant barbed wire, and standardise wildlife-safe designs on all new works - especially along woodland edges and creeklines where gliders move. If Australia can spend up to A$368 billion on new submarines over coming decades, surely we can find the comparatively tiny dollars to make fences wildlife-safe.
Switching from barbed wire is a quick win for biodiversity conservation. It costs little, saves lives, and signals that we are serious about living with nature - on farms, along roads and, yes, on Defence land. Let’s stop turning our fence lines into silent killing fields and make this simple change now.
Call to Action
Email Celia Perkins who's in charge of property management at the Department of Defence. Share a copy this post with her and explain that you're keen for Defence to install wildlife friendly fencing ASAP - celia.perkins@defence.gov.au.
Thank you as always Gregory Andrews.
I forward your heroic posts to an animal advocacy and environment group I'm involved in.
We write letters to politicians on topics like this one urging attention and action to make the world a kinder place for all beings.
The other wire fence killer I see too often (I'm in rural Victoria) are fences with a double strand twisted as the top wire. Young roos who may be just able to clear the fence get a foot hooked in the wire which just tightens the strands as they struggle. A slow death or fox or dog attack is generally their fate. I can't see any reason for the two strands where one would do the same job and I imagine would be cheaper.