Fence Pull at the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge

            I just got back from a little trip to the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in northern Nevada. ONDA sponsors these volunteer trips several times a year to the various places where they’re working. Some are for wilderness inventories, and this particular trip was for a barbed wire fence pull. Sounds exciting, huh? Well, it was! I met some great ONDA volunteers who kept me laughing and a VERY hardworking crew who pull fence all summer on the refuge. And let me tell you, that is no walk in the park. They work 10 hours a day in the high desert heat for 4 days in a row, then get a little 3 day break before starting again. We only pulled for 2 days, and I was pretty beat but definitely impressed with these guys for doing it all summer.

Just a small portion of the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge.

Our camp on the refuge.

            Like I said, we worked for 2 days pulling as much barbed wire fence as we could. I think we got over 3 miles with a group of 12 of us, which apparently is pretty good! These fences were put in years and years ago by homesteaders and also the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Since it’s now a wildlife refuge, these fences are no longer needed. To take the fences out, you have to cut it at several spots, then remove the fence posts and spool the wire. It sounds easy enough, and we even had a nifty spooling machine the first day, but it broke on our second day of work, forcing us to spool all the wire by hand, making things a little more difficult. Sadly, I am not the most skilled barbed wire spooler; I ended up with a few holes in my clothes and scratches all over. Thankfully, the rest of my team was pretty skilled, and we were able to tackle A LOT of fence.

Joe, one of the volunteers, tying up some barbed wire while our group leader Anna works the spooler.

Miles and miles of fence and sagebrush all over. The sage smells so good, but, in combination with all the dust, it gave us some sniffles and sneezes.

Tackling a “rock jack.” These were kind of a pain to dismantle.

Several of many spools of wire we removed.

Although I enjoyed the whole experience, one of my favorite parts of being out on the refuge was seeing wild horses. I think we saw about 20 in total, and they are just an awesome sight. Seeing the wild stallions fight, I was just amazed at how strong they are. The Department of Fish and Wildlife is actually in the process of rounding up the wild horses and burros at the refuge in order to protect habitat for other native wildlife, such as sage grouse and pronghorn antelope.

Wild horses, way off in the distance.

We had the opportunity to drive out to another part of the refuge and take a little dip in some hot springs to clean up a bit, and we also stopped to check out Thousand Creeks Gorge, which was spectacular.

Thousand Creeks Gorge. Pictures really don’t do it justice.

The view beyond the gorge.

Overall, I had a great time out at the refuge. This type of environment is one that I've never been able to experience before. It's such a contrast to what we have in Lexington, but I loved it!