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Science, technology and innovative grazing methods mesh in a project of the Eagle County Conservation District

Eagle County Conservation District
Special to the Daily
Allegra Waterman-Snow of the Eagle County Conservation District prepares field notes as part of a geofencing project for grazing livestock. The project is just part of the district's recent work.
Eagle County Conservation District/Courtesy photo

Snow has begun to melt over most of the 850 square-mile area Allegra Waterman-Snow and her team studied during the last grazing season.

They were tasked with studying grazing allotments on Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands for a unique project that brought technology to the hinterlands, and may show promise of significant environmental upside.

Waterman-Snow, an active and earnest 30-something, is lead technician for the Eagle County Conservation District’s innovative virtual fencing project, and in charge of gathering data on the electronically controlled grazing plots that cover nearly 500,000 acres in Eagle County.



She and her team are at the end of the first season of a three-year project funded by a Conservation Innovation Grant to the Conservation District from the Natural Resource Conservation Service. The project could demonstrate that properly managed herds of cattle grazing public lands may help save the planet by increasing carbon sequestration. And if it works, will improve the outdoor experience for everything from wildlife to the increasing number of people using public lands.

How it works

Waterman-Snow and her team are accumulating some baseline data that will help show precisely what the effects are.

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Allegra Waterman-Snow and technician Matthew Ebert gather data on a test plot.
Eagle County Conservation District/Courtesy photo

Using “geofencing” to corral grazing cattle works like invisible fencing for dogs but without the buried wire. Instead, the system uses radio waves beamed by portable base stations. Collared cattle that wander past the electronic boundaries are alerted with a warning and possible shock. Animals can be contained and excluded from sensitive riparian and burn scar areas like the Sylvan Lake scar. A number of Eagle County ranchers have been using the innovative method, gathering national attention.

But there’s another element to managing the herbivores that can result in healthier soil, plants and ecosystems when properly done. It’s prescribed, rotational grazing and rest for each individual plot and it tailors and adjusts the grazing, sometimes on a daily basis, to address available forage, weather and number of livestock.

“VENCE (virtual fencing) is a tool for adaptive, prescribed grazing management,” said Laura Bohannon, manager of the Conservation District. “It allows closer, sometimes day-to-day management of the resource.” In traditional fenced allotments that’s far more difficult to control.

The science behind measuring what will happen on the ground has already been used extensively. Overseeing that and the data analysis is Retta Bruegger of the CSU Extension Service in Grand Junction.

“We want to look at VENCE (virtual fencing) not only as a technology that benefits ranchers and livestock but one that benefits the landscape.”

Bruegger said the Eagle County virtual fence project is challenging because it covers so much ground.

At the end of the three years, she hopes to illuminate the benefits of the technology as well as the tradeoffs, she said. Research for its own sake is not the goal of the project, but the goal of the data collection is to use tools like experimental design and accepted data collection methods to understand the impact (or lack thereof) of the technology on rangeland health.

Now the next step is to see if that approach can be applied to the expansive and complex landscapes of the mountain West.

‘Exceptional stewardship’

“We have a number of participants in this program that are demonstrating exceptional stewardship of the land,” Bohannon said.

The data gathering is conducted by Waterman-Snow and her team of Eagle County locals Matt Ebert and Ashlee Ducharme, prior to allowing grazing animals on the land, and then again, after. Plots elsewhere that are not using the virtual fencing are control plots to compare any difference in data.

When the data gathering team arrives at a test site to conduct a series of tests determined by the Colorado State University Extension Service, they lay out two 50-meter tapes that cross in a large “X”. Their data gathering will happen within this roughly half-acre circle within the “X”.

The first job is to dig a soil pit about 27 inches deep to conduct a nine-point test to determine soil texture and how well it absorbs water.

Then the team assesses plant cover within the study area that includes the percentage of cover and diversity of species. That’s followed by a dung estimate to determine use by grazing wildlife including deer, elk and pronghorn antelope

There’s also an assessment of the plant biomass. Grass is clipped, dried and weighed over five plots within each study plot.

This is repeated throughout the growing season on 18 different allotments across the county.

Waterman-Snow’s previous experience was intensively studying bird populations and behavior so she’s familiar with a disciplined data-gathering process.

“I went from looking at the sky to looking at the ground,” she said. “Soil is one of the most underrated components of the planet’s health. Catering to the health of the soil radiates out to everything else.”

The data collected during field season will be compiled over the winter. And while three years is a short time to draw conclusions, it can still help long term said Stephanie Pitt of the Conservation Service.

“This is a first-generation design. The next step will be to put this into the hands of the ranchers. Once we do that, they will come back with things that need to be changed.”

Pitt said the program is drawing inquiries from the brass at the BLM and Forest Service who are interested to determine if this could potentially be the next new approach to help manage public lands.

Additional benefits if the promising system proves its worth include removal of the extensive system of fences, gates and cattle guards. That benefits wildlife and also enhances the land for recreation.

For Waterman-Snow the process has been instructive.

“I’ve learned that my preconceived notion that grazing cattle on a landscape degrades the land is untrue,” Waterman-Snow said. “Grasses actually need to be grazed to regenerate. Grasslands have evolved with grazing animals like bison. Now cows fill that role. Those grazing animals help with seed distribution and play a much more important role in plant health than we give them credit for. This study may demonstrate that adaptively managed herds of livestock grazing on public lands can improve native grassland health because they are an important player in carbon sequestration.”

So, the next time you encounter a cow grazing on public land, you may want to thank it — particularly if it’s adorned with a distinctive collar.

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