Testing virtual fencing’s potential in B.C.

When the British Columbia Cattlemen’s Association initiated a targeted grazing project to reduce wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface, the prospect of rebuilding lost fencing to facilitate this was costly.

An estimated 900 kilometres of fenceline in B.C was burned in wildfires during 2017 and 2018, with a staggering projected rebuild cost of $14 million.

“In the southern part of the province, we’re looking on Crown land at a cost of about $20,000 per kilometre to put in standard four-strand barbed wire,” says Amanda Miller, rangeland ecologist with Palouse Rangeland Consulting.

This economic challenge prompted the British Columbia Cattlemen’s Association (BCCA) to launch an innovative pilot program to develop virtual fencing technology suited for the context of B.C.’s grazing lands, using wearable technology for cattle.

Originally, BCCA explored existing technology available in Australia, New Zealand and Norway that didn’t require physical infrastructure. Due to back orders and technology that isn’t compatible with Canada’s cellular network, however, the group decided to create new technology that would work in Canadian conditions.

Funded by an Agritech grant from the Province of British Columbia, the pilot began in the spring of 2021. The primary partners in this project are the BCCA, Thibeault Ranch of Cranbrook, A4 Systems of Calgary, which is designing the collars, and Two Story Robot of Kamloops, which is designing the software. Other partners include Telus, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, Thompson Rivers University, the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta.

With this technology currently in development, the goal is to allow a producer to draw the boundaries of their virtual fence lines instead of installing underground wires. “Those virtual boundaries are enforced by audio and electrical stimulus on a physical collar,” says Miller, who is the project coordinator.

“The collars themselves have a combination of satellite, GPS and cellular LTE technology in them. So they know where they are through GPS tracking and they’re able to enforce those boundaries via those stimuli.”

The collar is the only physical piece of technology required. “There’s other technology out there that utilizes base units, but we, in the context of Western Canada, wanted to steer away from that because a lot of the utilities from these would be on public land or extensively managed lands … so we wanted to stay away from the potential of vandalism,” she says.

As many areas where this technology would be most useful tend to have poor cellular service, the developers wanted to ensure the product can be used in areas without cellular service or intermittent cellular service, so it isn’t required to enforce the virtual boundaries.

“You can sync (the collars) up and then put them on and they can be used in those areas that have pre-programmed boundaries … because in that case, they would rely just on the GPS and satellite versus the cellular connectivity,” Miller says.

“In areas of intermittent cellular connectivity, they’ll sync up that data whenever they get into cell service. But also in areas where there’s no cell service, if you wanted to sync your data and have some connectivity, there are options around using cell boosters and having base units in specific areas that could provide that connectivity, or even using long-range antennae and potentially flying drones to do a data sync.”

Because of the electronic components within the collars, the developers didn’t want producers to have to physically change the batteries, so they are working on building large-scale battery capabilities into the collars. “That includes having solar panels on them to help charge up the components, and what we’re aiming for is something that doesn’t need to be charged and that can be kind of self-sufficient for up to at least a seven-month period of time.”

As well as an economic advantage to the province in replacing fencing, there are benefits for the individual rancher through this technology, Miller explains. This includes saving money on fencing and reducing labour by using the GPS tracking included to easily find their cattle.

“From a wildlife perspective, because virtual fences have that unlimited flexibility in timing and spatial design of fences, it has huge implications for habitat stewardship and benefits to species at risk and other wildlife species, along with benefits to riparian areas (and) community watersheds,” she says.

After creating the prototype collars and the software, the initial testing phase took place with 15 collars on cattle at the Thibeault Ranch. At the time of writing, results were expected by late October or early November. From there, Phase Two of the pilot will include creating the second versions of the collars and software based on the early results from the prototyping phase, then beta testing these with a larger number of collars.

Once that is complete, they plan to proceed “with the ultimate goal being creating something that’s commercially available that can really enhance the stewardship of our rangelands in Western Canada and provide improved economic returns through maximized grazing opportunities and reduced labour for beef production,” says Miller.

While the group aims to have a product commercially available within five years, Miller states it’s tricky to put an official timeline on it at this stage. “Not only are there the technological hurdles, but we’re also dealing with live animals, and in the case of British Columbia, when we put them out in forested range tenures, they’re gone for months on end and they’re going through rugged country,” she says.

Regardless, Miller is enthusiastic about the possibilities this technology will present to producers. “There are other opportunities for fencing and GPS tracking and things like that, but this brings it both together, and I think that it could fill a definite need within the industry and provide competitiveness and sustainability,” she says.

“It’s a really exciting thing to be part of, to be honest. I feel this could be something that could represent a really positive opportunity for the industry.”

This article was originally published at Canadian Cattlemen.