Listen to Jay Smith, a rancher in Idaho, and Joel Yelich, a University of Idaho researcher, describe their experience managing cattle on a 100,000 acre U.S. Forest Service grazing permit that had burned the year before. Jay was able to keep grazing the permit because virtual fence allowed him to keep cattle off the burn footprint without putting up barbed wire or hotwire. Most rangeland grazing problems are related to animal distribution, and wireless fence may prove to be a game-changing distribution technology, almost a back-to-the-future approach to managing livestock distribution on large landscapes, places where physical fence is not feasible or advisable anymore. Virtual fence can enable effective herding on land with challenging topography and vegetation.

This episode is sponsored by the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission and Life on the Range: https://idrange.org/life-on-the-range/.

Transcript and links at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-123-virtual-fence-action-wild-open-spaces-idaho-jay-smith-joel-yelich.

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