Targeted Grazing and Virtual Fencing

In this episode we spoke with Dr. Flavie Audoin, an Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona and Assistant Rangeland Management Specialist for the UA Cooperative Extension. Dr. Audoin’s research examines solutions for livestock producers who are seeking to raise animals and manage rangelands in a sustainable way. She talked with us about how targeted grazing can help minimize invasive plants and reduce wildfire risk, and shared the potential benefits and drawbacks of new virtual fence technology.

If you’re enjoying this podcast, please consider rating us and/or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict, or Podchaser. Thanks!

Follow us on Twitter @RainShinePod

Never miss an episode! Sign up to get an email alert whenever a new episode publishes (http://eepurl.com/hRuJ5H)

Have a suggestion for a future episode? Please tell us!

Come Rain or Shine affiliate links:

DOI Southwest CASC: https://www.swcasc.arizona.edu/

Transcript

Targeted Grazing and Virtual Fencing

Sarah: Welcome to Come Rain or Shine, Podcast of the U.S. Geological Survey, Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center or Southwest CASC.

Emile: We’re supported by New Mexico State University and the University of Arizona. We are your co-hosts, Emile Elias 

Sarah: And Sarah LeRoy. Here we highlight stories to share the most recent advances in science, weather, and climate adaptation, and innovative practices to support resilient landscapes and communities.

Emile: We believe that sharing some of the most innovative forward-thinking and creative scientific research and adaptation solutions will strengthen our collective ability to respond to even the most challenging impacts of climate change in one of the hottest and driest regions of the world.

Today we're speaking with Dr. Flavie Audoin, an assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources in the environment at the University of Arizona, and she's also an assistant Rangeland Management specialist with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. Dr. Audoin's research and extension expertise focuses on finding sustainable solutions for land managers and especially livestock producers raising animals on Rangelands.

Welcome Dr. Audoin. Thanks so much for being with us today. To start us off, I'm wondering if you can explain to our listeners who might not be familiar with Cooperative Extension, what it means to be a cooperative extension specialist and how that might differ from a typical academic role at a university.

Flavie: Hi everyone. Thank you for having me. So a Cooperative extension specialist is really a bridge between the university and the people that are on the ground. Basically, my job is to take research and translate it to what I like to call ‘normal words’ that everybody can understand, and basically trying to turn research into practical and usable tools that everybody can use – producers, land managers – and it can be related to grazing management, invasive species, drought, wildfire prevention, livestock production. There's a lot of topics that we can cover. It can be quite diverse and my role is also to bring those questions and challenges that those land managers and livestock producers have back to the university to kind of try to guide the research that we do here at the University of Arizona. So it's really different from a typical academic role which often just focuses on classroom teaching and publishing research papers.

Extension work is really very applied and relationship-based because we have agents in the counties that are always in the community working with their clientele. So it does involve a lot of time in the field, working directly with those agents, producers, the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, and the communities.

And it's a little bit different on how we are going to measure our success. Compared to producing a lot of peer review journals, most ranchers are not going to read a very dense scientific paper. You're going to want to give them a shorter version that they can actually use.

Emile: Excellent. Thanks so much. And so you talked about, you know, your extension role and, and sort of linking research and summarizing research to make it really accessible. And so I'm wondering, you also are a researcher, so what different types of Rangeland management solutions do you research and work with?

Flavie: Yes, so I have two topics right now that I'm really focusing on. So I've been in my position for two years, so I'm still pretty new, but I'm working on targeted grazing and virtual fencing. So that's two big words. I'm going to kind of maybe help you and the listeners by doing some definitions here.

So targeted grazing is basically the application of a specific kind of livestock at a determined season, duration and intensity to accomplish a defined vegetation or landscape goal. So in other words, if you're trying to target salt cedar for instance, that's a browsing species, a woody plant, you are not going to want to do that with cows or sheep.You're going to want to use goats because goats are more, their diet is more focused on woody species. You're going to want to  choose the right tool. Targeted grazing is a tool in your toolbox to combat invasive species. And in each type of livestock is also a tool that you can use and be successful or not with that. 

And there is more and more interest in targeted grazing right now because of all of the invasive species that we have in the state of Arizona, and also the risk of wildfires. So we can use that as a prevention tool for wildfire management. And along with fire, targeted grazing is actually the oldest vegetation management tool.

It doesn't always have a good reputation in the eye of the general public because of previous history with overgrazing. So by trying to use targeted grazing, we're trying to reintroduce grazing animals as a benefit to the land that's surrounding us every day. And targeted grazing is not for someone that's in a hurry. It takes time and patience. So you really have to think ahead and plan carefully to be able to do that. 

The second part of my research right now is virtual fencing. Virtual fencing is a new technology that's available for producers, and it is a management tool that uses invisible barriers that are going to be established by global positioning system coordinates, so basically GPS coordinates that you're going to use, and it's going to influence livestock movement with a combination of auditory and electrical cues. So the cattle, the sheep and the goats are going to wear a collar, and the rancher is going to use the app to draw fences that you cannot see as a human.

The animals cannot see it. But with the technology, once they're trained, they're going to be able to understand that this is the barrier and they should focus on grazing that area of the pasture. So if you have a dog that keeps wandering around, you may have heard or seen dogs that wear collars and you can draw  boundaries.

So it's kind of the Simpsons system, but now it's applicable for livestock. 

Emile: Thank you so much for giving us those definitions of targeted grazing and virtual fencing, and I'm really curious about how you personally got interested in targeted grazing and virtual fencing and Rangeland management in general.

Flavie: You know, so that's a long story, but I'll try to keep it short. So yes, I'm not from the US originally. I'm from France. So in France we do not have Rangelands. But when I was doing my master's degree, I had to come to the US. I had to do a research internship to work on my English and I came to the US in Arizona to do that on a ranch in Cochise County. I went back to get my degree and then a PhD project came about here about Criollo cattle on that same ranch in Cochise County. So I came back here, did my PhD, and then I, you know, I kind of fell in love with Arizona, rangeland, those open spaces, the cohabitation of livestock and wildlife and somehow I ended up focusing on virtual fencing and targeted grazing with my current position, which has been a very interesting research because I think by using targeted grazing for wildfire prevention we're trying to protect communities from burning down. It's never fun when you have your house burned down or when you're scared that a wildfire may, may come very close to you. So using that to help the communities has been very rewarding and interesting for me. And then the use of virtual fencing really is a, I think is a, might be a game changer in the future for producers around the west because they can do a better job at grazing their ranch and have a better distribution over their landscape.

So it's just been fun to be able to use technology but also use animals. This way I have time outside of the office. 

Sarah: Thanks, Flavie. That's a super interesting story coming all the way from France to Arizona and being a native Arizonan myself, I can relate to the beauty of the desert and I can imagine wanting to stay here - and so we are happy that you decided to stay. 

And so, and speaking of Sonoran desert, you've got some work in Tucson that's combining both of the, the targeted grazing and the virtual fencing that you described to combat an invasive grass that we have here in Tucson. So could you describe that research and whether the methods are working?

Flavie: Sure. So that invasive grass is buffel grass, which is a very highly flammable grass that's really good at spreading itself. That's the issue, you know, with invasive species. They have a very good way to spread quickly and take over quickly. So actually this project just finished right now. So that was kind of a pilot study and I collaborated last year on that project with Sonia Norman from the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and then Grant Tims from Grazing Specialist LLC and then the Tucson Fire Department.

Sonia had received a grant from the Department of Forestry and Fire Management to target buffel grass on the A mountain with different treatments. So she had hand pulling, herbicides, and targeted grazing. Somehow I got looped into the conversation because I had just joined the university and my title said targeted grazing. So she reached out and we kind of started thinking about how we could make that happen. And then we had a new technology, virtual fencing, that I wanted to try on - I'm trying to try virtual fencing in all of the companies on every ranch that I can, to kind of give some information to our producers to know which one is interesting or not.

And so by having that, I got involved with the project. I also knew the Grant Tims just bought, actually sheep - sheep that were from that ranch that I did my PhD on, so I knew those sheep very well. I understood their herd instinct and things like that. So it was, it was a very interesting project where we were trying to bring grazing animals in the middle of an urban area where we were in a very public area, so, you know, we had a lot of public looking at it. And so you have to be kind of conscientious of how you're going to do things to make sure it's successful. So the sheep were not just, you know, let to roam free with cars on and no fences. It's still a technology that can fail. 

So we did have an electro netting around them, this way they could not escape. A lot of people, you know, when they saw the sheep on social media, they said, oh my gosh, you're bringing back sheep in a bighorn sheep area. No, we were not, it was safe. And so regarding the success of this project, usually when you do targeted grazing, you want to do more than one year because of that seed bank.

So was really a pilot study where The Desert Museum wanted to do targeted grazing and then try to see if they could apply less herbicides. Um, so I would say right now it's been pretty successful because the sheep were able to remove a lot of biomass of the buffel grass, and it's pretty hard work to do it by hand.

It's very steep slope with a lot of rock. So having four legs helps a lot compared to volunteers with two legs! And so that was a, that was a cool tool that the Desert Museum wanted to use. So I think we were trying to get more funding to do more project like this on A mountain because the Tucson Fire Department is actually a big supporter of this project. They would like to see more sheep to have less fire around town. 

Sarah: Excellent. Well, I'm glad to hear that the pilot study was successful and you are hoping to get some more work done on that. And you mentioned with targeted grazing that a piece of that is picking the correct animals for the specific plants.

And so you've got some other targeted grazing projects with goats and cattle. You know, the one in Tucson was with sheep. I was wondering if you could explain or discuss the goals of those projects. 

Flavie: Yes. So I have another project with two of my colleagues, Amy Ganguli and Ashley Hall in Dudleyville, Arizona, where we're using goats to try to attack saltcedar. Saltcedar is a very invasive species that is an issue for wildfire prevention. So it's, we, right now it's on hold, but we have 200 goats kind of doing a pilot project as well to see how it works because saltcedar is pretty hard to get rid of. So it might take a long time to be successful with that one.

Then we have another project on the pipeline that should start next month with the Tonto National Forest too, and it's again within my colleague Ashley Hall, using virtual fencing in this time to focus on red brome to create fuel breaks on the B-Line Highway to prevent wildfires because every summer there that there is a wildfire, they have to shut down the highway.

So it's a lot of issue for people traveling. So we are trying to see if that would be a good tool that we could use in the future. And then I have also another project that's going to happen hopefully in, at the end of the spring, and it's going to be with cattle as well, and with a virtual fence company that is not yet available in the US but I'm going to test with my colleague Kim Reynolds, and this time it's going to be trying – it's not necessarily targeted grazing except for specific grass cultivars where the cattle don't seem to like it. It has very low palatability. So we want to try to use the virtual fencing to force them.

I mean, we don't want to force animals, but to apply pressure to try to see if they could do a better  distribution on the landscape. 

Sarah: So I'm just curious, where do you get the animals from for these various projects? Do you partner with ranchers in the area or - I know you have goats and cattle and sheep that you are working with. Where do they come from? 

Flavie: I have a site business where I have my own ranch. No, I'm just kidding. So yes, I work with, for the goat and the sheep, it's two grazing contractors, so Grant Tims for the sheep and Reese from Rocking AR Goats for the goats, and then for the cattle, because it's virtual fencing, a lot of ranchers are interested in testing it out.

So I actually get requests from ranchers to collaborate on projects with them. Because if I can get the, sometimes I'm able to get the technology for free, so this way they, you know, it's a very expensive technology. So by going through the university, it's kind of a win-win situation where I get to test the technology to tell all of the other producers if it's going to work for them or not. And then that producer gets to play with a new cool tool. 

Sarah: Okay, great. So yeah, so thinking about the virtual fencing then, and it sounds like a lot of ranchers are excited about it, so maybe you could explain why they're excited and why it's a helpful alternative to kind of traditional wire or other fencing that we are familiar with?

Flavie: Yes. So I would say that mostly the producers are interested in virtual fencing because it diminishes or decreases the need for building physical fences and maintaining them. Believe me, I've done my fair share of building fences. It's not fun, so I don't blame them for that. Also in the last few years it has become very, very expensive to build a fence.

So let's say in Arizona, building a mile of a cattle fence (is) maybe up to $20,000 or $30,000. So that's a huge investment that ranchers don't necessarily have the money for. So by using virtual fencing, even if virtual fencing is still expensive, you do not have to do all of those extra cross-fencing in a pasture.

So you want to have an external perimeter fence. And then with the virtual fencing, instead of having to create new fences, you can just use the virtual fence and then move the cattle that way. So it's saving money and labor for that part. It can also improve their livestock distribution. You know, most ranchers go out and check the forage condition because their main, their main product is producing weight on their calves or if they're producing meat, they're going to want to have finished animals. So they are really concerned about how the animals distribute on the landscape because if you have a pasture where you have a lot of concentration and then you really don't get any rain to have more forage, then well next year you don't have access to that feed bank.

And so you really want to make sure that your livestock are going to go all around. And it can also in case of, and those are still, we need to do more research on those topics. But if, for instance, there is a pasture where you have a toxic plant that you know is going to bloom and the animals are going to go after it, you can kind of protect your livestock from going, to be in danger by applying a virtual fence around that.

Sometimes if you have in areas where we have protections of riparian areas or wildlife that needs time to nest or things like that, we can prevent the cattle from going there –knowing that it's still a technology that can fail. So it's not a hundred percent. And I would say that there is a great way, you know, you're on your phone, you can, you can be in your office or on your couch and you can see your cows where they are.

So knowing where they are, that they're not on the highway, getting hit by a vehicle is for sure - it does help ranchers sleep at night better. And also there is notification if you have an animal. If a collar doesn't move anymore, you're going to get a notification that there is an issue. So then you pay attention to the animal.

It might be because the collar is on the ground or maybe that animal is sick or is in danger. And then the ranchers can provide support for that. And I would say a last example is a huge gain of time. I used to be in California for a year for extension, and I was working with a rancher, and I always use her as an example because it always gets the message to ranchers.

But she used to need two weeks to gather a whole herd on the Forest service. And after using virtual fencing it only took her five days and the big saving for her was that she didn't have to buy as many beers for a crew. So that was a huge benefit for her operation. But I do want to say that Arizona is an open range state, but the regulations are going to vary you know during the with the county or the local ordinances.

But it's not because you're going to virtual fence that you should not have a perimeter fence because we still need that protection from highway or a high danger zones because of potential technology failure. 

Sarah: Okay, thanks Flavie. There's definitely a lot of positives related to virtual fencing, so I'm wondering if there, I mean, you've mentioned it's pricey. It's expensive, but are there any other cons or drawbacks to using virtual fencing? 

Flavie: Yeah, so for sure the cost is a, a big thing. With any type of technology, you know, there is a steep learning curve, so you have to kind of – I mean, the companies are here to help you with how to use the technology, but then you're on your own.

So if you're not tech savvy, I think you should not try to do that because it's going to be more complicated for you and more challenging, and you really want to use the virtual fence to make your life easier, not more complicated. So that's definitely one thing. Also, some companies need what they call base stations or towers for their technology to work. And those base stations or towers need to be situated on the ranch where you have a good line of sight. And some of those companies don't understand what ranchers have to go through site-wise. So we just had to do that at the center of the experimental range. We have so many rocks that we're like, there's no way we can put that post in the ground.

And so, you know, they, they need to come out more and they're doing that so they listen to user feedback and then change their technology. So that, I really appreciate that they're flexible with that. And I would say that some companies are solar powered and are making statements about their battery life, but we've not tested it yet in the US so we will see if that is actually a true statement or not. I hope so. 

Some environments and topography on our ranches are different, and so one company may not work well because of trees and things like that. And I, I still want to say that even if you go that virtual fence route, you still need to have boots on the ground. You cannot just rely on the technology.

You have to be out there and check on the rangeland condition in your livestock. It's not for everyone. It's a very exciting technology that we're go, we're seeing more and more use in the Western US and I think I'm excited about it because I, there's a lot of benefits from using that technology, but we also need to make sure that we don't overdo it too quickly.

Emile: Thanks, Flavie. It's really interesting, this technology, and from what you just mentioned about both the pros or the benefits and the cons of the technology, it makes me wonder if it's, you know, if this technology, if virtual fencing is accessible for the average rancher in the Southwest, and if not, what are some things that could happen to make it more available and accessible for all ranchers across the southwest?

Flavie: The answer is no, it's not accessible for everybody. It did become more accessible over the last few years, but as I said, it's still very expensive and the technology might be challenging for some ranchers to use, due to their ranch, topography and environment. There is some programs through the USDA NRCS that has a, what we call an EQUIP program where you can actually partner with the, this organization and then get some funding to buy the technology for you. 

We do have early adopters that want to use the technology, and that's why I'm so busy because they reach out to do some collaboration. So it's great to have those ranchers because to me, I think that the best way to then spread the word is actually having producers, talking to producers and how it works and what other pros and cons, rather than as extension or researcher say, oh yeah, that, you should go that route. 

I would say also it's important to know what are your objectives with using this technology. I have ranchers that I get a lot of phone calls from ranchers in Arizona, but also out of state. And some just want to know where the cattle are. You do not need virtual fence for that. You can just buy some GPS ear tag tracking that you can put on your cows and know where they are. And I'm actually testing three companies right now, to be able to help our producers if they just want to do that. If you have a producer that wants to do a better job at grazing your land - yes, then you can start talking about virtual fence. 

But I like to say, don't do it because your neighbor is doing it. Each ranch is very different and each rancher has a different objective. So you, it's really important to look at the pros and cons from a rancher, to make sure that, you know, it's not just a, a new tool that in two weeks, you're not going to want to look at. And finally, I want to say that I think virtual fencing can be seen as a potential conflict mitigation tool because of not having those hard fences might be better for wildlife corridors. You can maybe protect some high-sensitive areas by using this technology.

So I think that it may help, you know, sometimes have better education between land managers, the public, and people using public lands for recreation. 

Emile: Excellent. Thanks Flavie. So the United Nations has declared 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, and the intent of that is to raise awareness about the importance of rangelands and the livelihoods of pastoralists worldwide. And so I'm wondering if you can describe your work related to this or your thoughts about this.

Flavie: Yeah, so 2026 is definitely an exciting year for someone working in rangeland management because of that special year. As you said, the main objective of that year is to bring awareness about rangelands. So. I don't need to talk to my colleagues about rangelands, they all know what it is. But if you go down Tucson, in downtown and then ask random people, or do you know what rangelands mean? I'm pretty sure that most people are going to say, excuse me, are you speaking French? You know. They're not going to understand that word. And so it's really trying to educate the public on what's around us. I would estimate that probably 80% of the state in Arizona where 75 to 80% is actually rangeland.

So it's really all around us. So I'm heavily involved in an effort. I'm right now producing a 60-minute documentary. That's going to address the general public on what rangeland and pastoralists are. And it's also going to actually focus on new technologies that ranchers are trying to use to do a better job at grazing rangelands.

And that's not going to be only focused in Arizona. We have a bunch of states from the Western United States involved in a project. Then we're launching a global social media outreach with photos, videos to educate people on what's going on in the states, but also out there in the world. So, trying to really see everybody working on rangeland as a whole, not just, we're just here in Tucson, we have to focus in Tucson, but open it to other people. Also we are working on doing some exhibits around the state to talk to the general public on, what are rangelands, what are pastoralists, trying to invite ranchers, talking to this event to answer these questions 'cause sometimes we really don't have much opportunities to have someone from the general public and a rancher talk to each other. 

So having that conversation could be pretty interesting. And then the last things I'm involved with is trying to do a proclamation for the state of Arizona to say, yes, this year is the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists.

Sarah: Thank you, Flavie. I'm wondering if you, for our listeners who are not familiar, what are pastoralists. 

Flavie: So, and it's called pastoralist because of that global effort. So in our case, pastoralists equals ranchers. Pastoralists usually are going to be people raising livestock and they're going to move them around on the landscape to go graze at certain times of the year.

We don't really have pastoralists in the US but, so pastoralist is ranchers for us. 

Sarah: Perfect. Thank you. And you have described some very exciting pieces of your work. Your job sounds to me like a lot of fun. You're out on the landscape talking with ranchers, and it seems like you do a lot of - a broad range of efforts.

So I'm just wondering to you, what is the most exciting part of your work and maybe what's the most challenging part of your work? 

Flavie: So a good question. So I would say the most exciting part is that there is never a dull moment. I have many stories to share. So you know, with extension, I get to have a foot in research and a foot on the ground.

I'm not a person that likes to stay in the office so really having that option to go out and help ranchers, land managers and communities finding solutions to their challenges or needs is very interesting to me. The most challenging part is, I would say – and you probably get that question that answer a lot – time and money.

So it's a pretty basic answer, but that's really true. There is a very high demand for projects as I've tried to communicate in collaboration about virtual fencing, and I'm kind of already at capacity. So if you know how I could clone myself, I think that would be very helpful, you know, to be able to have more people on the ground to do research.

And we have to think that, in 2022, I think it was around 42% in Arizona of agriculture product that was coming from livestock production. So producers, livestock producers is a huge clientele in our state. And I'm not the only rangeland management specialist. We have, I have several colleagues around the state doing the similar projects.

Sarah: So it sounds like we need more of you is what I'm hearing. 

Flavie: I'm not including myself for that reason, but I, I need more people on the ground. 

Sarah: Yes. Understood. So I want to talk about hope. Because we like to end all of our episodes on a hopeful note. And actually I think this whole episode we've been talking about very positive and exciting and hopeful things, but just asking you, you know, what gives you hope for the future.

Flavie: That is a very tough question. I would say that what gives me hope is the people who care for the land. Those people can be ranchers, land managers, volunteers, nonprofits, your neighbors that are trying to work together to keep rangeland healthy. You know, even with drought, wildfires, and invasive species, I'm still inspired by the dedication of some people to try to do a better job and trying to find a solution to those challenges.

And the advances in technology that we mentioned here are helping producers manage their herd more efficiently and adaptively. And when I say adaptively, it’s that they're going to look at what forage is available and then move their herd for that. And so that's going to allow them to respond to changing conditions way faster than we could do before.

And it's more necessary because of drought issues, and they're doing that to protect the land for future generations. 

Sarah: I think that is a great answer, even though it was a hard question. Good job. What is, just wanna end with, what is one thing that you would like listeners to remember from our conversation today?

Flavie: Okay. I'm going to be an advocate for ranchers, if that's okay. So. To me, ranching in the southwest is one of the most challenging jobs because rangelands are constantly changing. Ranchers deals with drought, wildfires, invasive plant species. They have predators. I mean, they have a lot of things that they have to deal with still while managing water resources, soil health, wildlife and trying to produce food. Sometimes they don't have a good reputation, and I want to make sure that your listeners understand that their work and life are deeply tied to the health of these landscapes. So they do really care about them. So if you enjoy hunting, hiking, biking, fishing, or wildlife, you know, remember that thoughtful grazing on public lands helps reduce wildfire risk and is going to support healthy range and ecosystems for everyone. 

Emile: Flavie Audoin, thank you so much for speaking with us today. It's been delightful. And thank you for advocating for ranchers and Rangelands across the Southwest. 

Flavie: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Sarah: Great, thank you. 

Emile: Thanks for listening to Come Rain or Shine. Podcast of the USGS Southwest CASC, New Mexico State University, and the University of Arizona. If you liked this podcast, don't forget to rate or review it and subscribe for more great episodes. 

Sarah: A special thanks to our production crew, Reanna Burnett and Lauren White.

If you want more information, have any questions for the speakers or would like to offer feedback. Please reach out to us via our websites.