
About the Desert Fence Busters
The Desert Fence Busters is a collaborative conservation project in Tucson’s west valley to improve and enhance wildlife movement between natural areas by removing miles of deadly fencing barriers. This collection of organizations and volunteers banded together in 2021 to identify obsolete fences and remove fences for the benefit of wildlife movement.
While not its own official non-profit, the Desert Fence Busters is a coalition of several dedicated groups working towards one goal: protecting and supporting wildlife by removing legacy barbed wire fencing.
2024: A big year for fence busting
In 2024, the Desert Fence Busters continued to refine their fence removal strategies. Work was prioritized in the Coyote-Ironwood-Tucson Linkage (wildlife movement within the Coyote Mountains, Ironwood Forest, and the Tucson Mountains). The group identified bottlenecks and chokepoints in fencing and prioritized work that supported the use of existing Central Arizona Project siphons, overchutes, and bridges along with existing road culverts.
Over 11 work events, a whopping 339 Desert Fence Buster volunteers spent nearly 2,000 hours removing 28.8 miles of obsolete and dangerous barbed wire fence!
From the project’s start, volunteers have removed 65.3 miles of fence. If placed end to end, this length could encircle the City of Tucson!

The Desert Fence Busters also prioritized roadkill hotspots and impacts from obsolete irrigation ditches. The group focused on the removal of the following fence types in order: Double fences, full removal of obsolete fences (leaving a single fence in place) and conversion of fences to wildlife friendly standards.
After the last fence removal event of 2024, the team was rewarded by reports of mule deer moving freely through the work area—no longer faced with the dangers of the barbed wire fence that was just removed!
With facilitation by the Tucson Audubon Society, a total of 364 “death-pipes” of various diameters were also capped in collaboration with Desert Fence Busters events in 2024. As a conservative estimate, this prevents the death and suffering of more than 8,000 animals that could have become entrapped.

Read the Annual Report
Catch up on past Annual Reports
This is the fourth Annual Report from the Desert Fence Busters—check out past reports to learn more about this critical work!