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The first Draper Natural History Museum Lunchtime Expedition of 2021 will cover “The Wires that Shape the World: Fence Ecology and Conservation.”
Hosted by the Buffalo Bill Center of …
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The first Draper Natural History Museum Lunchtime Expedition of 2021 will cover “The Wires that Shape the World: Fence Ecology and Conservation.”
Hosted by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Wenjing Xu will begin the virtual talk at noon on Thursday, Feb. 4. Attendees must register for the Zoom meeting in advance by visiting www.bit.ly/3qRemn4.
Fences are one of the most widespread manmade features on Earth, yet they are often omitted from discussions of humanity’s impacts on the environment. From country borders and property boundaries to livestock management and conservation, fencing has played a critical role throughout history, yet has also raised controversies around their unintended impacts. Following her journey from the Tibetan plateau to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Xu will share the hidden ecological impacts of the wires that have shaped the world.
Using pronghorn and mule deer in southwest Wyoming as an example, Xu will discuss how she and her colleagues used animal tracking data to understand how fencing affects wildlife movement — which can assist fencing management at the landscape scale. Xu’s talk demonstrates that the emerging field of fence ecology will be well-positioned to provide the science to manage and mitigate one of humankind’s most pervasive alterations of the planet.
Xu is a Ph.D candidate in wildlife ecology and rangeland ecology at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management of the University of California, Berkeley. Her research draws on movement and landscape ecology and applies geospatial tools to understand impacts of our increasingly fragmented world. Xu said she wants to better understand socio-ecological dynamics in landscapes shared by humans and wildlife, and to seek a balance between wildlife conservation and human well-being.
Xu was born in Hangzhou, China, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in natural resources at the China University of Geosciences, and a master’s in geography at the University of Georgia.
Aside from research, she is interested in multimedia science communication, filmmaking and gardening.
