Adopt A Wildlife Acre

The High Divide and Greater Yellowstone Ecosystems in Montana are home to some of the most spectacular wildlife migrations left on Earth. Species like elk, mule deer, and pronghorn regularly make journeys exceeding 100 miles, connecting seasonal habitats in this dynamic landscape. Maintaining connectivity – the ability for animals to move freely across the landscape – is essential for the long-term viability of these wide-ranging mammals. If they lose the ability to move, the effects of stressors like drought, extreme snowfall, disease, and predation amplify, making every aspect of an animal’s life more difficult. But in the Western US, wildlife connectivity is threatened by barriers to movement, like fences. The scale of the problem is immense: conservatively, over 600,000 miles of fencing crisscross the West. In southwest Montana, the major focal area for NWF’s Fencing for Wildlife Program, over 20,000 miles of fence overlap pronghorn habitat in just two counties. And by some estimates, one deer, elk, or pronghorn is killed annually from fence entrapment for every 2.5 miles of fence. By blocking movement and entrapping animals, fences can have major impacts on wildlife populations.

Luckily, NWF's Fencing for Wildlife program has been busy converting fences to wildlife-friendlier standards that allow animals to pass more freely. In our last update about this program in the spring of 2024, we had removed or modified 23 miles of fencing and stated a goal of 100 miles of fence modifications by 2028. We are well on track to exceed that goal, having achieved an additional 55 miles of fence replacement since then, for a total of 78 miles of fencing removed or modified to wildlife-friendlier standards since 2021! Compared to the thousands of miles of fencing out there, this may sound like a drop in the bucket. But we utilize a data-driven approach to prioritize fences that pose the biggest barriers to wildlife within critical migration routes, winter range, and habitat bottlenecks, ensuring each project maximizes benefits for wildlife. For example, research shows that woven wire fences pose the greatest barrier and are most lethal to pronghorn. Of the 27 miles of fence projects completed or in progress in 2025, 72% have been woven wire.

Critically, this work requires the support of the community within the rural settings where we work. NWF has become a trusted leader in raising awareness and connecting landowners with resources to improve wildlife habitat connectivity, having completed fencing projects with 24 family-run cattle ranches in rural southwest Montana. We have also completed projects across dozens of miles of Bureau of Land Management lands. These collaborative achievements translate into the landscape-scale impacts necessary for conserving entire ecosystems.

Located in the Crown of the Contientent, one of the largest still intact ecosystems in the United States, the Badger Two Medicine area sits between Glacier National Park, two contiguous wilderness areas, and the Blackfeet Reservation. The area is also a federally-designated Traditional Cultural District under the National Historic Preservation Act due to its profound cultural significance to the Blackfeet Nation. To protect the Badger-Two Medicine area (part of the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest along Western Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front), the National Wildlife Federation and the Glacier-Two Medicine Alliance secured an agreement to cancel the last three grazing permits in the area. This action ends cattle grazing, which has impacted resources and caused conflicts with grizzly bears and other carnivores in a key ecological corridor, while also fairly compensating the ranchers who held the grazing permits. As readers know, this market-based approach recognizes the economic value of public land livestock grazing permits and has proven to be a successful model across the west in resolving conflicts between livestock and at-risk wildlife, as shown through the retirement of over 1.7 million acres of high-conflict, public land grazing allotments over the past 20 years.

The Lubec-Badger allotment, covering over 28,000 acres and permitted for about 340 cow-calf pairs, was the sole active grazing allotment in the Badger-Two Medicine area. Retiring this allotment eliminates grizzly bear/cattle conflict in core grizzly habitat and benefits a variety of species, including wolves, elk, lynx, moose, mule deer, wolverines, as well as enhancing wildlife connectivity. The benefits also extend to aquatic species as two streams, for which the Badger-Two Medicine area is named, flow through the allotment as they pass from the Continental Divide to the plains. These streams contain important habitat to westlope cutthroat trout, a native species that is considered at risk and a prioirty to protect and restore. Removing grazing will improve riparian habitat and water quality, benefitting native fish as well as terrestrial species while also improving both tribal and public hunting and fishing opportunities.

In an area that has largely remained intact and where the list of plant and animal species inhabiting the area has remained unchanged since the time of Lewis and Clark, this project helps to return and restore thousands of acres to its more wild roots. While the benefits are numerous and extend to many species across a vast landscape, the cost is economical as $100 protects roughly 15 acres of important habitat.