Highway 120 from Meeteetse to Cody is a hotspot for Yellowstone-bound drivers. It’s also a hotspot for wildlife-vehicle collisions. A wildlife biologist, nonprofits and others are modifying barbed wire fences to help wildlife get off the road faster, with the hope of lessening accidents.

Wyoming Game and Fish Wildlife Biologist Tony Mong said pronghorn in particular have a hard time clearing fences, especially along Highway 120. They’re hit and killed along this highway twice as frequently as the state average.

“ We're really kind of focusing on trying to open that bottom wire up, either by raising the bottom wire or changing the configuration of the fence in these particular areas where we know that we're having problems,” he said.

Mong said they are trying out three different types of fence configurations and will monitor how migrating ungulates respond. One design is replacing the bottom wire with a pipe and raising it to a level that pronghorn can go underneath.

Mong said 20 total fence modifications (each crossing counts as 2) along Highway 120 and the nearby Greybull Highway on private and public land are planned. He said the project is in partnership with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Nature Conservancy, Absaroka Fence Initiative, Wyoming Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Land Management.