Wildlife Fencing as Resistance from Below: A Case from the Slovenian Borderland

This chapter is about wildlife fencing in six villages along the Slovenian side of the Slovenian–Hungarian border. Here, local farmers feel that their livelihoods and traditional way of life are under pressure from local hunting grounds and encroaching wildlife from across the border. The chapter explores the historical processes of border management and the wider politics in the area which have led to this situation. Farmers claim that while wildlife feeding on their crops is a threat to their economy, the encroachment on their fields has benefited the hunting economy, which is in the interest of elites. In this particular context, fencing becomes something more than a biosecurity measure, namely a social praxis with insurgent political connotations. Fences represent farmers’ commitment to their profession and way of life, their resistance against the agents they find responsible for their precarious state and the persistence to stay in place for a while longer. This chapter investigates biosecurity fencing as resistance from below.