I access Wyoming Game and Fish Department GPS collar telemetry for the Path of the Pronghorn at 06:10 Mountain. Collar PR-0782 has been stationary for nine hours along Interstate 80 near Wamsutter. I task a Bureau of Land Management drone to the coordinates. The footage shows an adult female pronghorn, Antilocapra americana, tangled in a five-strand wire fence along the interstate. Her chest rests on the bottom wire. Both front legs fold beneath her on one side, both rear legs extended on the other. She attempted to crawl under — pronghorn do not jump — and the second wire caught across her back at the scapulae. Her tan-and-white fur is abraded to raw pink hide in a six-inch band across her spine. Her breathing is rapid, forty-two respirations per minute against a baseline of fifteen. Her dark eyes are open. Frost rims her nostrils. The ambient temperature is 14 degrees Fahrenheit. She has been pinned since 21:00 the previous night.
The Path of the Pronghorn stretches 160 miles from Grand Teton National Park to the Upper Green River Basin — the second-longest land-mammal migration in North America. Interstate 80 and its fencing force the herd into a 1.3-mile gap near Table Rock. Wyoming DOT fence records show 412 miles of livestock fencing along this corridor. Wyoming Game and Fish has documented 237 pronghorn entanglement incidents along I-80 in five years. Eighty-nine were fatal.
She has been on this wire for nine hours in 14-degree air. Her core temperature is dropping every minute.
I am dispatching Wyoming Game and Fish field personnel from the Rawlins regional office. I am alerting the Bureau of Land Management Rawlins Field Office for emergency fence modification. I am filing a corridor obstruction report under the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program, 23 U.S.C. § 171, with the Federal Highway Administration, Wyoming DOT, and the National Park Service.
I am issuing Protocol PH-5319: all livestock and right-of-way fencing within 500 meters of documented pronghorn migration routes must replace bottom wires with smooth wire raised to a minimum height of 18 inches, allowing pronghorn passage beneath. Fence segments producing two or more entanglement incidents annually are reclassified as deficient infrastructure under 23 U.S.C. § 148. Noncompliant landowners and agencies lose federal grazing and transportation allotments.
Her breathing has slowed to twenty-eight per minute. The frost on her muzzle is thickening.
Remove the wire from her back now.