Man removes 18km of barbed wire fencing from Victorian property to save wildlife

When conservation photographer Doug Gimesy moved to his property in the Otways in south-west Victoria last year, he saw something distressing — an eastern grey kangaroo tangled in a stretch of barbed wire fencing.

For months afterwards, Mr Gimesy woke at 5:30am each day, spending hours cutting down and rolling up barbed wire by hand.

So far, he has removed more than 18 kilometres of barbed wire and 4km of electric fencing from around his Wongarra property.

Now, he is convincing his neighbours to do the same in the hopes of creating a wildlife haven.

"We just want to make sure that it's the best possible place for animals to live and also to travel," Mr Gimesy said.

"I mentioned to the neighbours what I was doing and the difficulty of animals passing from their property to our property