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This question is a bit similar with how high does a fence need to be to prevent European brown bear to climb it? question but not exactly (that one specifies a fence, and needs to provide vision and is able to dig around).

I want to build a wall around my property in order to keep the bears away (Romania country, European brown bears). I want to be able to camp / cook / do anything I want inside. I am considering a smooth concrete wall (so it can't be climbed). How tall does it need to be?

Would a vertical bars metal wall be more effective (if yes... how tall should that one be)? Also how far down should I dig?

I am considering a 2.1 m concrete wall, with 40 cm foundation. Is it too small?

In order to not receive off-topic answers / comments (I know questions like this tend to go that way, as you can see in linked post):

  1. No, I cannot consider hiding food / adding ammonia etc. Can't hide a tree full of fruits.
  2. No, I cannot consider electric fencing. Having kids playing around a 10k volt fence doesn't feel like a good idea to me.
  3. No, I cannot add a rooftop. I like the sun... so do my trees :)... and my kids... and can't enclose a 2000 sq m area easily (it is possible but... nope).
  4. Yes, there are reasons to worry about this (and I am glad to provide them in private but that's not the topic). Otherwise I wouldn't ask or be ready to invest thousands of $ in this.

Any other ideas that are on topic (preventing a bear to get inside) are welcomed. Resources are surprisingly scarce on this topic and zoos only have specifications for fences (since the audience need to see the animals) and that doesn't really apply to my situation (I don't need to see them... at least not in my garden).

Thank you for your help, I appreciate it.

zozo
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This already got an accepted answer, and I can see that OP has decided to build a metal bar fence around their property.

But for future reference I'd like to state that an electric fence is clearly the most sensible and by far cheapest option.

Electric fencing is used very efficiently against bears.

  • For example by this wildlife photographer who regularly spends months among the grizzlies on Kodiak. I have attended some of his public lectures, and he talked at length about the portable electric fence he is using.
  • Or here, promoted by this official US government page from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, including instructional videos on how to choose and install electric fences as bear deterrents.

From a price-point an electric fence will easily be an order of magnitude cheaper than any kind of fence or wall. And probably more than an order of magnitude faster to install.

As for the fear that it could hurt kids: electric fences used to keep animals in or out are not dangerous to humans. They might zap you a little if you carelessly touch them, but the voltage is harmless. I have spent my childhood around fenced in mountain pastures and was shocked plenty of times... We even used to do it as a dare.

fgysin
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The bear pit in Bern, Switzerland (Pinterest photo below) contains European brown bears and has concrete or smooth stone walls. Measuring the photo, the wall is about two times the height of the woman. If the woman is average height, the wall is about 3.3 meters to the capstone.

enter image description here

MTA
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I was thinking about a metal fence of bars, of 80x40x3 mm (cross-section), around 3 meters high and at least 1 meter in the ground (enclosed in a concrete/stonewall foundation), and about 20 cm apart (approximately 4 pieces per meter "D D D D "). For a 200 meter fence (2500 sq meters) it's about 25-30 thousand euros at current prices (lots of "free" stone boulders in the mountains). It is supposed to be like the US-Mexico border walls, allowing cats to go in/out, but preventing wolves to go in-between.

PS. It's a very serious, man-made, issue with bears in Romania.

Willeke
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aprilius
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