Anti-refugee barbed wire kills wildlife

This video from Australia says about itself:

Tawny Frogmouth barbed wire danger

12 April 2011

Tasmania’s Tawny Frogmouths and other native species are getting caught and injured in barbed wire fences, Bonorong Wildlife Park reports.

From the Washington Post in the USA:

The new anti-refugee fences of Europe are killing wild animals

By Adam Taylor, December 18 2015

This year, a number of European countries did something that only a few years earlier would have been unthinkable: They built fences on their borders in a bid to prevent large groups of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa entering their countries.

These fences may have provided a temporary solution for the countries that put them up, although in most cases the flow of refugees and migrants was only diverted to their neighbors. The barriers are having other, unintended consequences, however: According to a letter filed to the European Commission by the government of Croatia, wild animals are being killed by the fence constructed by its E.U. neighbor Slovenia.

Croatia’s letter argues that Slovenia’s barbed-wire fence is obstructing the migration of animals, violating European legislation about the conservation of natural habitats. According to the Associated Press, deer are the animal most commonly getting caught in the fences, and hunters have been documenting the dead animals they find on the border with social media.

The New Scientist reports that while the death of deer is gaining attention, experts are perhaps more concerned about the effects of the fences on migrating or roaming animals who already have small and endangered populations. Magda Sindicic, a researcher at the University of Zagreb who helped pen the letter from Croatia, told the publication that the effect on the remaining population of the Dinaric lynx could be dramatic.

“Lynx use habitats in both countries and cross the border daily to search for food and partners to mate,” Sindicic told the New Scientist. “The population is primarily endangered through inbreeding, so mating and producing fertile offspring is already a challenge for this population, and this fence will make it even harder as it will stop animals from migrating freely across the border.”

Among the other species that could be hurt by the fence are wolves and bears, Sindicic explained. And while Croatia’s complaint focuses on the fence along its border with Slovenia, dead animals have also been documented on the fence built by Hungary along its border with Croatia. The potential for problems has been known for a while, with little action taken so far: In June, Hungarian newspapers reported that the environmental concerns about a fence being built on the Hungarian-Serbian border could lead to the construction being halted, but the fence was completed anyway.

Related articles

• Protests Erupt in Hungary as ‘Fortress Europe’ Rises to Replace Open Borders
• “Open Up, Europe! Let Migrants In”: Former EU Adviser Urges Opening of Borders
• German Lawmaker: At the Root of Refugee Crisis are Wars Led by the United States in the Middle East