The above quote encapsulates the dilemma that weaves its way through this review on the environmental, social and economic impacts of game and veterinary fencing. The veterinary fences erected since the 1950s in southern Africa, were and still are, meant to serve a purpose for the common good of the citizens of the countries within which they lie, by protecting national herds from disease (see Box 10.2 for an estimate of the extent of veterinary cordon fencing in southern Africa). The stemming of a transboundary animal disease outbreak is an expensive, timeconsuming effort and it can lead to multiple deaths of both humans and animals. For example the current Rift Valley Fever epidemic in South Africa has led to a number of human fatalities (Khan, 2010). Indeed the rapidity with which this epidemic swept down the length of the country has spurred on the development of a South African vaccine bank for this and other diseases (Cape Times 2.5.2010). On another level, the multiplicity of African mammal related disease transmission networks, which interact with veterinary cordon fencing (which represents an essentially static disease intervention strategy that intentionally disrupts the contact structure between wild and domestic animals and pathogens) requires more indepth study (Kock et al., 2010). It is only relatively recently that there has been 'recognition of a fundamental association between disease and environmental variables' (Hess et al., 2002). The fact that pathogenic transmission events can cross a barrier such as a fence illustrates that changes to landscape structure and function (e.g. by imposing fencing) may affect the dynamic behaviour of the disease in question (McCallum 2008; Ducheyne et al., 2009; Reisen, 2010). At the southern African wildlife/livestock disease interface, wildlife fences, in one form or another (i.e. to control diseases and/or to function as protected area biosecurity barriers) seem set to remain a part of the landscape. Or are they? This compendium does not represent an exhaustive array of research on the impacts of fences (and, more broadly, habitat fragmentation research), but it does give an insight into the multidimensionality of the impacts of these extremely simple physical structures that engender complex and radiating effects. To gain an understanding of this complexity is a prerequisite to ameliorating, where possible, the worst excesses of fencing in term of impacts on conservation efforts.