UW-Led Study: Fences, Roads Foiled Pronghorn in Mass Winter Die-Off
Published April 04, 2025
When a severe winter struck Wyoming’s Red Desert in December 2022, one pronghorn doe made a desperate escape attempt, trudging 240 miles through a snowbound wasteland.
Fences blocked her routes to less snowy habitat, foiling her ability to run out of the deep snow and adding time and risk of her search. Ultimately, she returned to the area she started from, where she died. Normally, pronghorn can cover many miles a day at speeds up to 60 mph. In an open landscape, they could easily move out of harm’s way, using survival strategies that have been successful since the Pleistocene. This time, however, the worst winter in two decades combined with fence and road barriers, leaving the swiftest mammals on the continent with no way out. Pronghorn tried to make escape movements to find more hospitable habitats. By the end of the winter, half of the pronghorn had died in a stronghold of their range.
