Temporary Wildlife Fencing: Building a Barrier You Can Take Down

A crop needs six weeks of protection, not twenty years. A soft release needs a boma the animal can walk out of when the gate opens. A construction phase needs the public off a lawn that will be a lawn again in March.

Temporary wildlife fencing exists for those jobs, and it behaves nothing like a permanent fence. Nobody drives a post three feet into the ground. Nobody pours a footing. The line stands on the surface, holds for a season, and comes off without a scar.

That changes the failure mode. A permanent fence fails at the anchor or the panel. A temporary one fails in wind, at the ground line, and in the head of the animal that learns the line is soft.

Most of the money in a temporary system sits in the parts that never touch the mesh: the ballast, the bracing and the base.

Executive Summary

Temporary wildlife fencing is a surface-standing barrier built to be removed. It suits a crop season, a soft release, a quarantine period or a construction phase, and it suits nothing that needs predator-grade containment.

Three things decide whether it holds. Ballast, because an unanchored panel overturns in wind long before the mesh tears. Ground contact, because a line that sits on the surface leaks at the base. And bracing, because a temporary run has no post embedment to resist a corner load.

The reuse cycle is the fourth number, and it is the one buyers forget. A system designed to come apart, stack and re-tension will run three or four seasons. One designed to be cheap will not survive removal.

Quick Answer

Temporary wildlife fencing is a surface-mounted mesh barrier ballasted or ground-screwed instead of concreted. Size the ballast for the wind load, close the base with a laid apron or weighted skirt, brace every corner and change of direction, and buy panels that come apart and stack so the system runs several seasons.

Key Takeaways

• A temporary line fails in wind and at the ground, not in the mesh.
• Ballast weight follows the panel’s sail area, so finer mesh needs more of it.
• A laid apron closes the base better than burying a skirt you cannot dig.
• Corners carry the load a footing would take on a permanent fence.
• Animals learn a soft line fast, and a slack panel teaches them faster.
• Reuse depends on how the panel comes apart, not on the mesh grade alone.

Where Temporary Fencing Earns Its Place

Four jobs come up again and again, and each one has a different clock.

A crop season. A temporary deer fence for a crop season runs from emergence to harvest. It needs to be up before the plants are worth eating and gone before the combine.

A soft release. A soft release boma mesh pen holds an animal while it acclimatises, then opens. The same structure serves as an acclimation enclosure mesh for a bird or mammal moving to a new site. The fence is part of the animal’s training, so it has to look solid and open without warning.

A quarantine period. A temporary quarantine pen mesh runs weeks, not years, and often sits on a surface that cannot be drilled.

A construction phase. Fencing a construction phase at a zoo keeps plant and public apart without leaving foundations in a lawn that has to be reinstated.

The mesh specified for a seasonal run is a different product from the one built to stand for a decade. What those four share is a defined end date. A line with no end date should be a permanent fence, and pretending otherwise costs more every season it stays up.

Steering, Not Just Stopping

A temporary line can also do a job a permanent fence cannot: it can steer. A wildlife drift fence set at an angle moves animals toward a gate, a crossing or an unfenced block, and it comes down when the season ends.

That is the ecological argument in the source material, made practical. A line that redirects movement for six weeks does less damage to a local population than a permanent barrier that cuts a range in half, and the principles of exclusion fencing still govern where the line terminates.

Panels or Rolls

Two products do this work, and they suit different sites.

Rigid framed panels arrive welded, square and stackable. Two people set forty metres in an afternoon, corners are predictable, and the panel comes off the ground clean. Movable fence panels for wildlife cost more per metre and repay it in labour and reuse.

Netting rolls are cheaper per square metre and follow ground that panels cannot. They also need tensioning, a top wire and more ballast, because a roll has no panel frame to hold its shape.

For a line that has to come down and go back up next year, the framed panel wins on almost every site. The framed animal fence panel range covers the sizes that stack into a trailer.

Ballast Instead of Concrete

A permanent fence resists wind through its footings. A temporary fence has no footings, so the load path runs sideways into weight.

Ballast for a temporary fence base comes in three forms: water-filled blocks, concrete cribs, or a ballast tray loaded with whatever the site has. Water blocks are light to deliver and heavy in service, which is why they dominate hire fleets. A 200 litre block weighs about 200 kg wet and 20 kg empty.

The number that matters is the overturning moment. Wind pressure on a 2 m panel at 0.6 kN/m² gives roughly 0.72 kN at mid-height, and the ballast has to resist that with a lever arm measured from the panel’s leading edge. Double the height and you roughly double both the force and the arm.

Practical rules that keep a temporary line upright:

• One ballast block per panel foot, two at every corner and every end.
• Ballast on the windward side of the line where the site allows it.
• No gaps in the ballast run, because a gap lets the panel rack.
• Ground screws where the surface allows them, since a screw beats weight on a hard-standing.

A no dig temporary fence post is the other half of the answer. Ground screws and plate anchors hold in turf, gravel and sand, and they leave a hole the size of a thumb when they come out.

Wind Load on an Unbraced Run

Temporary fence wind load catches buyers out because the mesh looks permeable. It is, and it still sails.

A 2 inch aperture in 3 mm cable blocks a meaningful share of the wind, and a finer weave blocks more. That is the trade nobody prices: a tight aperture is better for small animals and worse for a line with no footings.

Three controls manage it. Keep panel runs short and break them at a brace, set braces at every corner, gate and change of level, and leave a small gap at the base, because a panel pinned top and bottom has nowhere to shed load.

On a long straight run, a temporary line behaves like a sail on a rope. A 60 m unbraced run will move at the middle no matter how much ballast sits at the ends.

The Ground Line Without Digging

The base is where a temporary line leaks. Animals do not test the panel first, they test the bottom corner.

Digging is usually off the table, so the detail changes. Lay an apron of the same mesh 300 to 400 mm flat on the ground and weight it with bags, staples or the ballast itself. An animal that digs at the line meets mesh lying flat, not an edge to lift.

Three versions work:

• A welded apron panel clipped to the frame and pegged flat.
• A skirt of netting turf-stapled at 500 mm centres.
• A weighted ground tube, for hard surfaces where nothing can be pegged.

Seasonal crop protection netting often skips the apron because the crop is the target, not the soil. A deer reaches over a 1.8 m line rather than under it, so height does the work and the base matters less.

Habituation: The Animal Learns the Line

Wildlife habituation to a temporary fence happens faster than most managers expect. A line that moves under a nose teaches an animal that the barrier is soft, and the lesson transfers to every panel on the run.

Two habits protect the line. Keep the tension even, so no panel rattles or sags. And walk the line on a schedule, because a temporary fence is inspected by animals daily and by people weekly at best.

Where the line has to stand through a hard season, add a strand of electric tape at the top as a teaching layer, not as containment, the same split between teaching and holding that animal containment fencing draws for permanent pens. It works on deer and pigs, it does nothing to a determined badger, and it needs a supply.

Removal, Storage and Reuse

Reusable wildlife netting panels earn their premium at the end of the season, and only if the removal goes right.

Coil or stack to the original direction. A panel folded against its weave takes a set that never tensions out. Label panels by position, because a run re-erected out of order fights its own corners.

Clean before storage. Soil holds moisture against stainless and galvanised alike, and a stack of dirty panels in a closed container is a corrosion cell with a lid. The IUCN translocation guidance makes the same point about release pens: temporary hardware has to leave nothing behind.

Inspect at re-erection, not at removal. Look for bent ferrules, deformed frame corners and any strand that has gone slack at a clip. Storing and reusing mesh panels is a routine, not a hope, and a system that gets it right will run four seasons on one purchase. The guide to re-meshing an existing enclosure covers the same inspection logic for a permanent frame.

When Temporary Is the Wrong Answer

Temporary does not mean expendable. A temporary holding pen for wildlife is no containment barrier for a dangerous animal, and no public safety line.

If the species can climb, brace the run for a climbing load rather than a wind load, and that usually means a permanent structure. If the public stands on the other side, the line needs a certified barrier, not a panel on a water block.

The honest test is duration plus consequence. A line that stands two years protecting something valuable has already become a permanent fence with worse foundations, and that is the moment to hand over to a footing.

Specifying a Temporary Line

Write the schedule as a kit, because the person erecting it will not be the person who designed it.

1. Panel or roll size, aperture and cable diameter.
2. Frame section and the clip or coupler that joins panels.
3. Ballast type, weight and spacing, with corner and end quantities.
4. Ground screw type where the surface allows.
5. Base detail: apron width, staple spacing or ground tube.
6. Brace positions and the gate frame.
7. Removal, stacking and labelling method.

The animal enclosure mesh used for these kits comes in panels and rolls to the same specification, so a season’s extension can match the original order.

A temporary line also has to end somewhere sensible. Where it meets a permanent fence, a building or a hedge, the junction needs a return, and that join costs more per metre than the open run. Budget it with the containment netting pricing guide rather than discovering it at erection.

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