High-tech may be coming to the Southwest’s rangelands with an idea called virtual fencing.
With a software program, a rancher sets an invisible boundary around grazing areas. Each cow or sheep is fitted with a GPS-equipped collar. Information on livestock location and movements on the actual range is beamed to a base station tower and back to a rancher’s computer.
If a cow wanders toward the boundaries, it gets a warning sound. If it goes farther, it receives an electric shock. Theoretically, the animal learns to avoid the shock by staying where it belongs.
Virtual fencing is still mostly in the research and experimental stage. But it is being used on the ground in Utah and Colorado, and at the University of Arizona’s Santa Rita Experimental Station. Public land agencies, including the Kaibab National Forest, are also looking at its potential.
One big benefit is eliminating the high cost of physical wire fencing. The new technology could also mean better control of livestock; it can keep them out of riparian areas and other sensitive locations and allow more flexibility and efficient pasture rotation.
Yet virtual fencing isn't cost-free. Ranchers would have to furnish the software and collars for every cow. For the Prosser family's sprawling Bar T Bar Ranch in northern Arizona, that's about 2,500 collars. And if livestock are grazing on public lands, agencies might bear the cost of the receiving towers.
Bob Prosser says they’ll still need cowboys on horseback, someone who knows the land. But he thinks virtual fencing — if workable — would be a game changer for livestock ranching.
This Earth Note was written by Rose Houk and produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.
