Wildlife‐friendly fencing for bison: Assessing success for containment and conflict prevention

Abstract Fencing is an essential yet often disruptive feature of grassland landscapes around the world, contributing to habitat fragmentation and restricting wildlife movement. As conservation and rangeland managers increasingly adopt wildlife‐friendly fence designs to mitigate these effects, there is a growing need to understand how such fences perform for large, wide‐ranging species. The American plains bison ( Bison bison L.; hereafter bison) exemplify this challenge. Traditional bison fencing designs have prioritized containment over wildlife accessibility, driven by concerns of infrastructural damage and competition with cattle, should the bison escape. However, there is very little information about how wildlife‐friendly fencing designs can be adapted for bison management. To address this gap, American Prairie, a conservation non‐profit working to restore grassland biodiversity and rewild native species in central Montana, implemented a novel wildlife‐friendly bison fencing system designed to balance wildlife permeability with effective containment. In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness of this fencing system in containing bison across multiple management units. Bison escaped a total of 31 times across all management units during the 822‐day study period. Analyses showed that adult males had a higher probability of escape relative to females and juveniles. This research offers practical implications for land managers, evaluating whether these new fence designs can effectively contain bison while maintaining the ecological benefits of wildlife‐friendly fencing and advancing sustainable rangeland management. Practical implication . Our results demonstrate that modified fence designs can effectively contain bison while maintaining the ecological benefits of wildlife‐friendly fencing. Land managers can adopt these designs to advance sustainable rangeland management. Further research is required across diverse landscapes, herd structures, and management objectives to refine these systems for broad‐scale application.