How does barbed wire affect wildlife? Is there a better way to manage livestock location that distributes grazing effects and cares for the other animals occupying these landscapes? Maybe this is not a new idea? Jay Kehne with Conservation Northwest believes virtual fence is one of the answers. CNW facilitated and funded implementation of a virtual fence system for numerous ranchers affected by a large wildfire in 2020-21 that burned nearly half a million acres of sage grouse habitat in the Pacific Northwest. He's learned a thing or two about virtual fence and shares much of that in this interview.
The Art of Range Podcast is supported by the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission; Vence, a subsidiary of Merck Animal Health; and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.
Transcript
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>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on rangelands and the people who manage them. I'm your host, Tip Hudson, range and livestock specialist with Washington State University Extension. The goal of this podcast is education and conservation through conversation. Find us online at artofrange.com.
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Welcome back to the Art of Range. My guest today is Jay Kehne. He's the Associate Director for Conservation Northwest, and is the lead for their Sagelands Heritage Program. We're here to talk about virtual fence and the potential and maybe realized benefits for wildlife. I think probably both benefits for individual animals, and also benefits, or potential benefits, for habitat. Jay, welcome to the show.
>> Oh, thank you, Tip. Good to be here.
>> Well, I do want to ask you the obvious questions about how systems to control livestock location on wild open spaces can benefit wildlife. And we'll get to that. But I want to start, I guess, by saying that I'm asking you, because you have, at this point, significantly more experience with virtual fence systems than I do. At least that's my impression from what I know about you. And I'm an extension range specialist. And you're a wildlife advocate. So, this is not quite a man bites dog story. But I do think that it's unique and interesting that you have been heavily involved in virtual fence adoption in the Pacific Northwest. And actually quite a bit involved with on the ground deployment and management. So, why don't we start by talking about that? First, what is Conservation Northwest, and how did you get into messing about with virtual fence?
>> All good questions. Conservation Northwest has been around since about 1989, I believe. It's a smaller nonprofit. You know, what we do is connect, protect, and restore wildlands and wild places, primarily in Washington, but also up into British Columbia. You know, and we work for the animals, but we also have realized over the many years of existence that you don't get necessarily good projects happening for animals without the people involved, without the communities. And so I think that's the nexus between my work with Conservation Northwest and virtual fence is that it benefits both. It benefits people, it benefits ranchers, it benefits wildlife in many ways. And we can go into those. So, it's just kind of a natural fit. My background, I spent 30 years with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. I was a soil scientist, biologist, conservationist, worked with ranchers and farmers all over Eastern Washington. And I had one opportunity to go to Lake Tahoe, which I took, and spent four years down there as well. But I wanted to come back to the Northwest. It's home. And so I finished out my career here and went to work for Conservation Northwest. I've got a pretty strong background in respect for the ranching community, the farming community. I understand how that works. You know, I work with conservation plans and range management plans and wildlife plans and all kinds of farm programs, Conservation Reserve Program, et cetera. So, I was no stranger to the rural communities in which suddenly virtual fence became an option to I think improve those communities, improve those ranchers' bottom line. And while doing that, improve the habitat for wildlife. You know, less fences on the landscape mean more connectivity for wildlife. So, that's right up our alley. And when I /TP RT heard about this, you know, I had a boss who believes in the same things I've talked about. The communities are where we have to start working for wildlife improvements. And the people that live there, rural or urban, have to be behind these projects. And it took him a little while to get his head around virtual fence. But all in all, it became pretty evident pretty fast that, you know, the concept of removing these barriers to wildlife movement is great. But also there was a great opportunity to look into how it improves the forage. And by forage, I mean habitat, you know? Ranchers will call it forage. Wildlife folks will call it habitat. But it's the same stuff. It's the grass and the shrubs and the bushes and the vegetation that grows out there. So, giving it a chance with virtual fence to graze in a better way, in a more controlled manner, can be, and I think will be, and play out to be, better, you know, for that landscape, better for that ecosystem, better for those ranchers' bottom line, and better for the wildlife.
>> Yeah, I apologize if I missed it. I was trying to type a question while you were talking. I was listening. But if I missed it, tell me again, what is the geographic extent of the places where Conservation Northwest is actively working?
>> You know, all of Washington and up into British Columbia, so this north/south, connectivity zone. And then basically we're interested in the connection that goes basically from the Selkirks clear over to the Cascades, and eventually on into Olympia. So, we have projects, programs going. And, oh, we have a Cascades to Olympics program where we're working to help wildlife get under I 5. We have north/south connectivity. We have the overpass that we worked on on I 90 that helps keep the north and the south habitats connected in the Central Cascades. You know, I've worked my whole career in Omak, and there's a lot of connectivity that occurs? The shrub steppe habitats, clear from Oregon, and I'm all the way up into Kelowna. So, my particular focus is the sageland areas of our state. And not all of them. We needed to focus from just the logistics manner to some of the more Western shrub steppe areas. And those are the ones on the east slope of the Cascades. And so, for instance, there's very important shrub steppe over by Davenport and going over into Spokane. But at the time when we set up our program, we just didn't have enough staff to handle all of that area. Recently, we have been doing more work over there, just trying to work with some of the things that are threatening those shrub steppe habitats that one thing is clean energy, which we're for, but solar development can have a drastic effect on [inaudible] habitat, taking out shrub steppe across our state. So, we want to see that done in a conscious and meaningful way that doesn't hurt the wildlife or the habitats.
>> Do you have sister organizations that are working in other parts of the West?
>> Yeah, I would say, I can't think of one exactly like ours. Ours is kind of unique nonprofit. But we are an affiliate of what's the National Wildlife Federation, which is a national effort for wildlife and habitat. And there's 50 affiliates. So, in every state, there's an organization that's an affiliate for the National Wildlife Federation. So, we work in partnership with those, you know, National Wildlife Federation started out as a group of primarily organizations that were hunting focused, and still have, they have a pretty strong hunting background in their membership. It's also conservation groups that aren't necessarily tied to hunting, although we, I am a hunter, we're not against it or for it, we just, we're not, it's not our main emphasis. But so it's a really unique group of folks. There's environmental groups, conservation groups, hunting groups across the whole U.S., basically, and that's some of our major partners that we tend to work with.
>> Yeah, I didn't know that about the affiliates with the National Wildlife Federation. Were you, at what point did you become aware of virtual fence? Did all of that happen after the Pearl Hill Fire? And I'd like you to talk about the Pearl Hill Fire. But at what point did you become aware of virtual fence?
>> It was directly after the Pearl Hill Fire.
>> Okay.
>> Those fires, you know, of course burned, what, at least over 400,000 acres pretty much overnight. It started, I mean, I watched it when it started. From my house, I could see the initial flames were not too far outside of where my mother in law lives near Omak on a reservation. And that fire moved with, you know, sustained winds of 40 miles an hour that fast probably to the south. And it was only stopped before it got to Ephrata, basically, by some really good firefighting efforts, and a little bit of luck when a wind change and they were able to backburn. But it destroyed miles and miles, and, you know, hundreds of square miles of shrub steppe primarily. It didn't necessarily burn so much in the forestlands, but it was direct fire into shrub steppe. So
>> Can you describe that?
>> Oh, go ahead.
>> I was just going to mention, probably the vast majority of listeners are not in Washington State and may not be familiar with city names. So, I just thought I'd have you back up and describe sort of geographically where is that in relation to mountain ranges and rivers? And then talk a bit about the environment, the plant communities in this area of the burn.
>> Okay. So, you know, that fire burned, our shrub steppe is, you know, big sage, bitter brush, blue bunch wheatgrass, Idaho fescue, that's some of the species you hope to see out there if it's in good condition. I know their rice grasses and a variety of other grasses and forbs. But, you know, it's beautiful shrub steppe country. It ends up being, because we're sandwiched between the Cascade Mountains, and as a Cascade, or excuse me, as the Rocky Mountains start to rise up over by Spokane, and you start to get up, you know, basically into the Rocky Mountains. So, we're between those. And also there's the Schell Creek Range in between. So, a lot of times our shrub steppe is winter feed for [inaudible] for instance, or for elk. So, a lot of the bigger ungulates are using the shrub steppe, as well as it produces most of the forage that's not produced in a forested situation for private lands grazing, and/or public lands grazing on either DNR or BLM ground. But there's a lot of private lands that are in the shrub steppe. And that goes, like I said, it goes clear from Kelowna up in the British Columbia to the north. So, we're in basically North Central Washington here in Omak. And if you move, keep heading south down that Central Washington area, you'll come to two places, like [inaudible] Wenatchee, Ephrata, eventually Tri Cities, and down on into Pendleton, Oregon. And that's what we call the connected backbone, which is an important connectivity zone that runs from Oregon and all the way up into Canada, with a whole variety of species that we like to hope, you know, will have that opportunity to move north and south, in the event that they need to do so.
>> And at least in this part of the, in, well, say Eastern Washington, what percentage of the total sagegrass habitat was influenced by this fire?
>> Oh, that's a great question. I'd have to think back to
>> A lot, but
>> A lot, you know, like I say, it burned over 400,000 acres. There's a million and a half acres of ground that's suitable for some of the solar development and shrub steppe, but I don't think that's the final acres figure on how much shrub steppe is out there. But it burned a sizeable chunk. You know, some fires, in the 4 or 5,000 dollar range seemed like a lot. But this thing burned, you know, that distance would have been, oh, that's 100 miles north to south, and maybe 20 or 30 miles east to west. A huge chunk of land.
>> And some of that was farmland, wasn't it? It wasn't just, did it burn around the farm ground? It looked like from the fire footprints that I've seen that it likely burned up some wheatland.
>> Yeah, it burned up wheatland. It burned up conservation reserve lands, which were really valuable for a lot of species, and a really good program that farmers enter into to reduce the amount of wheat being grown. A lot of shrub steppe that burned up, a lot of homes. One of the folks that I know that got burned out now live across the street from me in Omak. They had to leave their farm and give up and say we're going to town. So, it was a bad fire when I'm sitting here in Omak looking out the window at, you know, a lot of this shrub steppe that I'm talking about. And everything that I'm looking at burned. And the ranchers that were affected by that were some of the first ones that we started working with on virtual fence.
>> Yeah, so what gave you the idea to, did you hear about virtual fence and you thought, hey, this could work here? Or did you start with, we just had a bunch of barbed wire burn up, we need to find a way to not put barbed wire back on these landscapes? Was the chicken or the egg the one that came first?
>> Well, I think it was the egg. But I was up driving around looking at some of the damage from the fire. That was the first thing was just get out and get a feel for it, you know, and I had been on the road two hours and still driving through burn country. And ended up down in Douglas County where, you know, that all, the fire across the river ended up jumping into Douglas County. And so that burned [inaudible] and Douglas and was headed for Grant County as well. But I stopped at a friend of mine, a rancher that I knew, farmer that farms in that area, and I just said, wow, this is really something. What's your plan? What happens now? And I think I asked him, are you going to rebuild all your fences, because he had all his fences burn up. And he said, nope, I'm done building the fences, I am waiting around for this new technology coming along that I heard about called virtual fence. And I said, well, what's that? Typically, most people say, is that like the dog collar? I think that's what I said.
>> Yeah, I've answered that question about a hundred times.
>> Yeah. Well, it's similar, but bigger.
>> Yeah.
>> Anyway, he said, well, I'll give you some contacts and maybe you can track it down. But he goes, it's coming, and I'm just not going to spend the money or waste, you know, you could try to get fences rebuilt through some programs, through state or federal money, but that's a lot of work and a lot of headache. But if you don't have a choice, that's where most people go. But he said, nope, I'm going to wait around for virtual fence. So, I looked into it. It was really hard to find any information. It was really, you couldn't just go to, you know, North 40 and buy virtual fence products. It wasn't around. You had to find whoever was making it.
>> That fire, it started in August, right, and ended in September of 2020? I'm just wanting to put a time stamp on when you were looking for virtual fence systems.
>> Yeah, I think it was called the Labor Day Fire. So, it started on I believe Labor Day and burned about, I'm not sure the total time before they called it out, but it burned, it burned overnight most of that distance. And then there was [inaudible] up in what not. I say they just got lucky with the wind change.
>> Yeah, I said September, because I was just looking at the fire footprint on Onex while we're talking, and it said the fire end date was September 7th of 2020. But I didn't realize all that happened in a week.
>> Yeah, yeah, it was, well, a lot of that happened overnight, to be honest.
>> Oh, my goodness.
>> It hit [inaudible] and burned out those folks I was telling you about that night. It was cooking. And, of course, you think, well, it gets to the Columbia River, and that will stop it. You know, that's a fire brick, like nothing can cross. You know, those embers went across. It was blowing so hard. And ignited the whole other side of the river in Douglas County.
>> And that's what they called the Cold Springs Fire?
>> Yeah.
>> That was probably the same [inaudible].
>> Pearl Hill and Cold Springs Fire.
>> Got it.
>> So, this landowner got me interested. I looked into it. I finally found a company called Vence. And it seems like they were the ones that were working with some ranchers. That led me to a gentleman named Mr. Bartholomew out in Montana. And I saw a video of what virtual fence was, and I got kind of excited about that. I gave him a call. Real nice gentleman. And we talked quite a bit about his experience. It was brand new on his place at the time. And he said, you know, there's bugs in it, and it's not perfect, but, he goes, it sure hecks maintaining fence and building new fence and worrying about all that. And I have so much better control over my animals. And so I think the next, there was a period there of just learning and call and trying to talk to people, and nobody seemed to know much about it. Several of the folks I know, ranchers, that had got burned out were, again, just like the first guy I talked to said, they're just going to wait until this virtual fence comes out. And so we had another situation up here in Okanogan County on what was called the old Figlenski Ranch. And we had Conservation Northwest had just purchased that to help keep it from being developed. And keep the connectivity open in this area. And then we, in turn, had given that to the Kalgo [phonetic] Confederated Tribes kind of in a land back deal. Because we don't like to own acreage. We just like to [inaudible]. And there was a rancher that was ranching that, a ranch family, Mike and Joy Wilson, and great, great ranchers. And at the ceremony where we were given that land back to the tribes, and he grazed it, he had the grazing lease, he came up and he said, you know, I've had some fences grown in past fires too, and I hear you know some things about virtual fence. And so we just started a friendship right there and started talking. And I said, you know, if you're interested, let's talk some more. So, you know, I stopped by their place several times. And Joy always seemed to have a fresh peach pie made, which didn't hurt things at all, go up to visit them.
>> That's right.
>> And so we decide, conservation said, well, now I had learned enough about this, it took towers, it took callers, and we had some contact, we had some people that were willing, we could, you know, we could create a program. I said, well, let's fund, conservation [inaudible] we'll purchase the towers needed. And that amounted to about $25,000. And if you'll, if you'll do the lease on the callers, and he said he would, and he would work out with the conservation district here to get another funding source for that as well. And so that wasn't necessarily the first virtual fence in Washington, but pretty darn close. I think there was one down south that was also happening about the same time. But, so, you know, it's his great ranch operation. He was able to not rebuild any of the fences that he had burned. He was able to start testing virtual fence using the hardware, or the software, to, you know, put virtual fences on the landscape, and farmed is in a way that I think, you know, he feels he could never do it before because of virtual, or excuse me, barbed wire fence is too expensive. That was the start of it. Then we turned right around and went back to that rancher I knew up in Douglas County who wanted to get virtual fence put on the ground. And we put in for a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant to do a pilot up there. And that was in the Cold Springs Fire area. And we were successful in getting that grant, which helped pay for five towers. It covered probably a quarter of a million acres with signal. Definitely covered all of his ranch. And I think he had about 500 head. We got callers. And so then he's been instigating, or excuse me, implementing virtual fence ever since then. And I think he's on his fifth year now. And so then we had, I was involved with what was called the Washington Shrub Steppe Restoration Resiliency Initiative. And it was a bunch of money that after the fire sent to our office in Washington State said, you know, we've got to come up with a better way to fight fires, to be ready for fires, and to regroup after them. And what can we do? And one of the things was to rebuild these fences in a way that was more friendly to wildlife, smoother wires on top and bottom. But at the same time, what's the best wildlife friendly fence is no fence at all. So, virtual fence was something that we worked to have the [inaudible] program be able to cost share on after those fires. So, landowners could come in and get 75% of their virtual fence, and caller leases paid for if they would install virtual rather than barbed wire fence. That took off and we reached a whole bunch more ranchers, you know, just in that first year after the fire, really going onto the ground that next spring, I think we had at least six projects going in Douglas and Okanogan County.
>> Wow. Yeah, sometimes I don't think to ask the obvious questions, because it's important to say these things out loud. But I want to ask, one, why is barbed wire, or wire fence, a problem for wildlife? So, I'd like to have you describe the effects of barbed wire on, you know, the variety of wildlife species that are negatively affected by it. And then more specifically about sagegrass. And then I'd like to talk about the cost of replacing fence.
>> Sure. So, there's a direct effect. Animals hit barbed wire. They get dangled up in it when they're trying to jump it or go under or go through. But it also is a barrier to their movement. You know, whether it's a slight barrier or a big barrier depends on a species. You know, antelope will stop at a fence and not cross it and run alongside it for miles and miles. That's affecting where they would normally want to go. They normally might want to get to where spring green up occurs quicker. They might want to get to where they need to get for fall or winter feed or calving or fawning grounds. And so it affects how the entire herd's movement can be affected by barbed wire fence. And some species, it's not as big a deal. You know, an elk can jump a fence pretty easily. But at the same time, elk can do a tremendous amount of damage to that fence. And once that fence is down, then the cattle management, you know, goes to heck.
>> Yeah, and what a rancher might call a good fence can trap elk. I recently saw, recently meaning within the last 12 months, actually was walking a fence with a rancher who had just put up some brand new wildlife friendly fence that had smooth wire on top and smooth wire on bottom. And the top wire was not too high, and the bottom wire was a ways off the ground to allow, you know, native ungulate calves to go through. And we came across what looked like about the size of a yearling elk that had, and this fence was tight, really tight. The animal had somehow gotten its leg, two of them actually, side by side, had gotten their leg caught in that top wire, and it twisted enough that it trapped them. And that animal, you know, died right there. At the time that we found it, it had been mostly chewed up, except for the bones and hide that were left on the leg. But it was under tremendous tension. So, we stopped and untwisted the leg enough to let it go, to take the tension back off the fence. And when it, you know, when it came loose just a little bit, there was so much tension that it was a little bit dangerous. That leg flipped around with a ton of force, like a catapult, and went flying. But that fence, which was supposedly done exactly the way a wildlife friendly fence ought to be done, caught two yearling elk and killed them.
>> Yeah, it's, I live on six acres, and I had it fenced. When I moved it, it was in barbed wire. And before I could get that changed out, we had sheep actually, and identifies two deer get caught going over the top. One was an adult, and it got caught and died before I could find it. And the other one was a young fawn. And, you know, they'd get over it, and they'd kick, give that last little kick on the way over, and their back legs would get caught. And, just like you said, it gets wrapped up. And I had to go, you know, kill that little fawn. Even then I thought, you know, this is just, you know, tools are needed to manage ground correctly. And fencing is one of those. But if we can get away with less of it, that makes me a lot happier. And I think, you know, most people don't like to see that direct effect of, you know, deer or elk or if you will getting trapped in a sense, or an antelope, or whatever. But, you know, the other species would be, you know, sage grouse are like little tanks when they fly. They just get up and go. And they don't always see those fences. And when they hit those wires, you can get a lot of mortality on sage grouse in particular. Some sharp tail grouse as well. But sage grouse, it can be pretty hard on them. And so you spend a lot of money and a lot of programs will go out to put little markers on the fence so that this sage grouse can see them. And that can help. But, again, fence wasn't there in the first place, you wouldn't have that problem. So, you know, the direct effect of fencing, and yet also the cumulative effect of connectivity, how it affects how species move, you know, it just adds up to some things maybe we Neff thought about is, you know, as we came into this area and we started ranching, and, you know, people knew that they had, needed fences to keep, first off, property lines separated. But then as range management came onboard and we learned, boy, you've got to move those animals around, well then we had to have all those cross fences. And the virtual fence necessarily isn't recommended for the perimeter fences. But all those cross fences, that's where you can, you know, save money, it costs so much less using virtual, as well as keep that landscape more open.
>> Mhmm. I'd like to talk some about the potential benefits of virtual fence to habitat quality, because that's maybe more of a secondary effect. It's really clear to see how having less wire strung out, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles of wire strung out across, you know, what are really somewhat wild spaces, can be, not having that wire can be a benefit. But I think it's sometimes less obvious what the benefits could be in terms of changing grazing in a way that maintains some important habitat features. And, yeah, here's some personal confessions. Sometimes it's healthy to stay in your own lane, as in, you know, don't /ABGTD like you have competence in knowledge or skill domains where you don't have much competence. But it's also important to roll with people who are not in your lane. And even though I value synthesizing wide sources of information, and I try to be a broad thinker, it's also really easy to fall into confirmation bias. And so, you know, my clear confirmation bias, which I'm occasionally, overtly, and helpfully accused of, is acting like grazing is always good. I don't actually think that. But I certainly gravitate toward people who feel that way. And I'm, you know, I'm always looking for evidence that supports that con including, because I like the conclusion. My defense is that I'm also looking for the principles that drive truly sustainable grazing, meaning grazing that has benefits to whatever ecosystem it's occurring in rather than harms it. And I'm not naive to the fact that grazing can do no harm. And, in fact, when I see places where grazing has been harmful, that's hard for me. And, you know, my profession is dedicated to working with land managers of all stripes to help them control the mechanism and the effects of grazing in a way that is beneficial. But as I've quoted Barry Perryman a dozen times as saying, grazing is a verb, not a noun. And the action of grazing can have negative ecological effects. And rangeland professionals, like you and me, do good grazers a disservice if we ever act like the full range of action in that verb grazing is all positive. So, I would like to ask you, as somebody who appreciates good grazing, and has been in the business of helping make that happen, but also doesn't wear rose colored glasses with respect to the full range of grazing, yeah, I think it's worth saying out loud some of the effects of what is sometimes called improper grazing, which really just means grazing that has negative ecological effects. Yeah, so I'd like you to describe some of the negative effects of grazing done poorly as a setup for discussing how changing the pattern of, you know, plant, partial defoliation of plants through domestic livestock, changing that pattern can have beneficial effects for wildlife habitat, which is also a cow habitat, as you mentioned, when we started.
>> Yeah, some people call it forage, and some people call it habitat. It's the same stuff. Had a conservation district manager, Mike Tobin in Yakima, say that once. And I never forgot it. It was just a right way to put it. Yeah, I started my career with NRCS in 1978. And I went to work as a soil scientist, mapping soils, and met a young range [inaudible]. He went on to become the state range [inaudible] in Washington. And he's still very active in range management circles. But we worked together for many years. And that's where I started to get an appreciation for and learn about proper grazing use. And the NRCS practices that led to that, which were fencing and water, water developments, and rotational grazing. It all became almost second nature as I walked that landscape and saw the variety of potential in every soil and every change of vegetation occurred on the changes of soils. And whether they were moderately deep, or deep shallow, or just had different physical or chemical properties, you soon begin to realize that there's a way this should look. And then there's a way that it shouldn't look. And the shouldn't look has a lot to do with [inaudible] or the composition of the grass and forbs and plant species were correct. And you started to kind of get in your mind this, this, I hate to say the word, but a cut climax vegetation. Or what did it look like before we were even here?
>> Sure.
>> And how are we trying to replicate that again today? Or not, you know? Or have we changed it so much through our grazing practices, and our fire regime, is it really, does it even come close to what it used to look like? So, it all, to me, comes back to that, the time of year that you graze, how much you put on it, how much pressure, and when to take that pressure off. And what is that capacity of that soil and that vegetation in that spot capable of? And how does it recover? And what does it need to recover? So, it's all about being able to control your grazing; the length, the duration, and the timing. And without fences, I think that's almost impossible to do, unless you're on small enough animals on large enough acres, you might not notice a detrimental effect of grazing, but
>> For using something like a herder or a shepherd, who's
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Manually moving animals on a regular basis.
>> Yeah. So, and economically, you know, that just became harder and harder to do. And so, you know, basically the industry turned to fencing to say, well, this is how we can do that. But it wasn't, you know, I think when we first settled this country, we didn't really think of fencing as this management tool as much as, you know, keeping your neighbors out. But then affixes range technology came along, we started to learn, you know, then we saw, well, we can't just turn animals out and let them go and pick them up later, you know, that's not going to be good for that environment. And eventually it will affect the forage that we have to use for the cattle, which can affect the number that we can put out there. And the number you can put out there affects your bottom line and your wheel business. So, I think it became apparent, you know, in the 50s and 60s at least, when things started to take off on range management, that you've got to do this right if you want to really have a good business, and maintain this for generation after generation. It's not just something you do, destroy the environment, or the forbs, or the species, and move on. You know, if you're there to stay, you've got to have these tools to do it riot. I forget what it was, it was one of the companies that sell virtual fence, said to me once, you know, virtual fence can make a great, or a good rancher great. It can make a bad rancher even worse. So, it's still a tool that has to be used, and used with science behind it and range management principles behind it, and then it can become an amazing tool. You know, to be able to keep your animals in is one of its aspects. To keep your animals out is another. If you need, because you're being pressured by Departments of Ecology or whatever, to keep your animals out of stream and [inaudible]. Maybe there's bull trout or whatever in there. You know, you have a tool now that doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to help get that done. If the vegetation and the climate that's hitting you this year is going to be Trent than next year, you have the ability to move that fence within a minute on your computer as opposed to I put it where I put it, it's going to be where it's going to be. That's where that fence will be until it falls over and we decide to build a new one elsewhere. You can adjust to those climate conditions. You can adjust to those droughts. You can adjust and say, hey, we need to do this differently this year. And do it. That's the beauty, really, of virtual fence. Its flexibility, its ability to keep things in as well as keep things out. We've got ranchers now that are working towards if you have grazing allotments on Forest Service lands, and let's say there's wolves in the area, and you know where they're dead in roundabout areas, because you're working with the Department of Wildlife. Use those fences to keep cows out of those areas can really help keep your animals out of harm's way for at least a portion of the year. So, there's a huge variety, I think, of the way this tool can be used. We're still learning. Folks that have been doing it enough are starting to learn how to use it for weaning. They're using it for bringing cows in in the fall. You know, it's just the dollar savings aren't just in the costs saved by not putting up barbed wire. The dollar savings can be in the management, in the people you have to put out, and the work you have to do in fixing barbed wire and/or bringing cows home when you don't even know where they're at, you know, and there's been many a rancher tell me that said, well, the best thing about this is I know where they're at. You know? For the most part. Morning and night. It's not always necessarily I've got to get out there every day now. It's like, okay, they're in, I'm good. Let's do something else with our time.
>> Yeah, regarding habitat, that reminded me of something that I have hoped for in virtual fence that namely that most of our property boundaries, there are exceptions, but many of them follow public land survey lines, which have zero relationship to the landscape. That's not quite such a big deal if you're in, you know, a landscape that is nearly flat, or much more heterogenous. And I won't name places, because people in those places will think that they're not as heterogenous as I'm making them out to be. Nevertheless, in nearly all of the Northwest, we have significant topography, even in the places that are flatter, and wouldn't be called mountainous. And, you know, so I've spent a lot of time in the last two years looking at topography and fences and property boundaries. And I'm almost always surprised at how, how incompatible those lines are with natural movement patterns of either livestock or wildlife in those landscapes. And so I like the idea of beeping able to change where we're trying to prevent animals from moving, or encourage them to move in a way that is flexible for one thing, because once you put a barbed wire fence in, it's going to be there for a while. And whether it was a good idea or not. And, as you mentioned, you know, you can have significantly different habitat conditions, forage production, even species expression. I've been living in Central Washington now since 2001. And I'm still surprised at how the same, the same spot on the ground, the same pasture, ecological site, can look significantly different from year to year. You know, one year you'll have more expression of this particular flowering plant. And the next year, there is a great species that you didn't even know was out there that now seems to be everywhere. And vice versa. And those things all I feel like demand a more flexible means of controlling animal location than has been afforded by barbed wire fence.
>> Exactly.
>> What is it, you know, in talking with some ranchers about this, one of the tipping points that I think we have maybe reached, at least for some people, is the cost of replacement. In the case of the Pearl Hill Fire, the cost was maybe not even the biggest issue, because there are a variety of programs and services and insurance that help, you know, cover the cost of stuff like that. You know, but in just run of the mill fence maintenance, you know, you stand, I've said this 100 times, but, you know, you keep standing the fence up and patch wire and replace a rotten post every now and then. But at some point, in some places, you get to the, you get, you arrive at the fence being bad enough that it needs to just be totally replaced. And that is now expensive enough that it makes the cost of a virtual fence system look reasonable. How would you describe the cost of either building new fence or replacing existing fence in the Inland Northwest?
>> Probably the easiest way to get the scale of it, and the cost, I mean, I've played with this in different talks that I've given, and, you know, I've said at big enough scale, virtual fence is maybe 1/100 the cost of putting up the same amount of barbed wire fence to do what you can do at that big a scale. Now, having said that, most people aren't at that scale. So, but it still is significantly cheaper, and I'll try to explain that a little differently, if you took a section of land, so it's a mile on every side, and you put barbed wire fence around that, so you've got four miles of barbed wire fence, right now I think we're running about $30,000 a mile to install, so $120,000 to give you control to keep your animals in that square mile, or keep them out of that square mile. Take that same 120,000, and you buy, let's just say it takes four towers. So, that's, let's see, that would be $50,000. That's going to give the capacity to put fence on hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres. So, wherever you want a fence, you put it. You can put it up in a minute. So, now think about, that's the scale that makes this so much more cost effective than barbed wire fence. At smaller scales, I think the prices are still competitive. But when we have the typical ranch, in the Northwest anywhere, that uses typically public land to graze in the spring, summer and early fall, and then brings them back home for the winter, you know, you're out on thousands and thousands of acres, if not hundreds of thousands of acres grazing, and yet how can you possibly put fence up through all those landscapes and keep trees from falling on them and maintain them and send crews out to fix them? Or even know that they're working to where you really don't have an effective rotational system, if most of your fences have gaps through them here and there from a, you know, a tree that went down, or the latest windstorm. So, whenever I talk with ranchers about it, they immediately, the ones that are using this tool, and using it in rough locations and in rough locations and in mountainous locations say, you know, it's just not only a time saver, it's a money saver. And it really makes a difference. You know? So, the collars, depending on the company, you can purchase them. Some other companies lease them. Different, there's different strategies of how they think, you know, their product can be put out to the public. Any way you look at it, whichever company we've been involved with, and worked with, and we've worked with several up in British Columbia, and we've worked with some here in the states that are different, but, you know, they all beat the cost of putting effective rotational grazing fences on the landscape, or cross fences, by a mile. I don't know how else to put it. By a long shot. And sometimes that's the first question is people say, well, it's going to be expensive. Well, expensive compared to what? Doing what, you know, how it's always been done? Not necessarily. Doing it to replace burn fence? Definitely not. You know? And so those are some situations where, you know, people will come into it and say, well, I have to replace that fence, or I want to build a whole new one. Yeah, this is going to be a tremendous cost savings.
>> Mhmm. You guys recently did a survey and some, by survey I mean sort of some deeper interrogation of people that are using virtual fence to learn a few things about how it's being used, what it's good for, what they found were some of the pros and cons. And I've probably said actually more than I know in that little bit about what was the purpose of your survey. So, can you talk about, a little bit about why you did a survey? And feel free to use a different term than that. What was the purpose and what did you learn?
>> So, I mentioned earlier that the program WSRRI, W S S R R, W S R R I, which is basically getting state, portion of the state legislative funds upwards of about 3 1/2 million dollars per biennium to work on fire prevention, to work on better processes as, you know, in the shrub steppe. And one of those things is to recover from fire. And that's a fence rebuilding is part of that. And so they have a cost share that goes out for people to replace fences, take away burned fences, old fences, and also replace fences with either wildlife friendly, and/or virtual fence, as one of the more [inaudible] wildlife friendly fences. And so that cost share money, about 75% of the cost, you know, it's competitive. You apply. And based on your species of wildlife that you're protected, as well as your range ground. You either make the cut or you don't. But you can possibly get funded through that. The WSSRI steering committee, which consists of the Department of Wildlife, the Conservation Commission, and DNR, wanted to know and make sure that they were spending their money as wisely as possible. The state money should go out in a way that's good for the landscape, good for the ranchers, and good for people either recovering from fire or trying to prevent fire. And so they came to us, because we had helped serve on a lot of the committees. Conservation Northwest staff, I spent a lot of time working on the Wildlife Front Committee with folks from all over the state, conservation district, ranchers, to help come up with how that money could go out to the ranch community. And they wanted to know then, what's the differences in some of the vendors that are occurring out there? And what are people saying about their experience with virtual fence? And what is the latest research? And what about, is there a possibility to share radio signals between virtual fence systems by different vendors? And there's just a lot of questions that I think, giving them credit, wanted to make sure they had some good answers to going into these next seasons of putting out state money towards virtual fence cost share. NRCS also now has a cost share program for virtual fence. So, this study will be used by a lot of others, other than those who have just paid for it. But, you know, so our staff was able to work with some of the ranchers that we had worked with, as well as others. When we started off, there was one virtual fence company in the state, Vence. Today, there's three that I know of. There may be more. But the bigger ones are Vence and Gallagher and a company called Halter. And so as ranchers started to learn about different vendors, they started to make different decisions on who they should go with. And then the funding agency, you know, this WSSRI, said, well, should we be funding all of them? What should we, what should we do? And so part of this report was to show the pros, the cons, the differences between the systems. And that's why they hired us. And so we did a, I don't know, interviewed over 30 ranchers that either we had helped get into virtual fence, or that others had helped, or that got into it on their own. We made contact with all of the three major vendors that were working in Washington at the time, and interviewed their folks. We interviewed some of the radio signal folks to try to figure out this concept of, you know, how do these signals work, and do they interfere with anything, or can they be used together. And then we did interviews with professionals and researchers on some of the work that they've been doing. And so we came up with a report that I think will be very valuable to the WSSRI organization, as well as to others. And they made it, it's actually available now to whoever we want to put it out to.
>> What were some of the major findings?
>> I think, for me, and, you know, I've been involved with Vence, I mean, me or my staff, with probably 17 different ranchers in Washington. I think there's upwards of 30 now total. So, we're kind of like a catalyst to get things rolling. And then we've backed off, and it's doing its own thing now. But in all of those that we worked with in Washington were Vence. We went up to Canada, because our work takes us to Canada, and we have, you know, we'd like to see virtual fence arrive in British Columbia just north of those as well. There's a lot of land there that could really be valuable to have less barbed wire on for connectivity and other reasons. So, but Vence was not international. They had not gone into Canada. And so it wasn't too long that Gallagher decided to, you know, move into the, into the international market. And primarily they were doing work in New Zealand and Australia. But they decided to, you know, be available in the U.S., as well as Canada. And so I was working with a rancher up there on some other things, and he really wanted to get into virtual fence, and came down for some of the tours that we held down in Washington. So, he got excited about virtual fence, wanted to go to Vence. They weren't, they weren't international yet, so then he was able to get ahold of Gallagher and get a project going up there. And since then, we've helped him with some financial aid to get more ground into virtual fence. And so that's where I started to learn a little bit more about the differences. But in this work we did, and these interviews, we really learned the bottom line, I would say, is there's not like a bad system. They all have their ins and outs, ups and downs, pros and cons. And a lot of it depended on what you wanted as a rancher to get out of it, and what you were willing to put into it. There's a variety of ways these companies have decided to pay, for them to make money off of this. Some charge for towers and lease out the collars. And their reasonable rationale is, well, the collars are going to change technically fairly rapidly, so we don't want you stuck with a collar. We're going to provide that as a service. Other companies say, no, we want to sell you that collar, or we're going to charge you less for the towers. And so if you kind of analyze it all, I'd say dollar wise, I didn't see huge differences between them all. But what you wanted out of them could be different. Gallagher, for instance, has a solar panel on the collar, so you're not, it's not necessary to take that collar off every year to put a new battery in, which Vence, that's how they operate, you do need to take that off. They are moving onto a newer collar that could probably go up to two years without changing the battery. So, and yet that solar collar that's on the Gallagher system is a bigger collar. It's more weight on the animal. So, again, nothing, I would say Vence tends to stand out on huge landscapes as a very, very good option. I'm not saying Gallagher is not a good option there. It can be too. Their towers, Vence towers carry the signal a lot farther, up to 10 miles. A Gallagher tower carries the signal about half that distance, up to about five miles. But they cost half as much. So, cost wise, it's not a big difference. But, you know, putting out three towers versus six towers is just, there's some maintenance that goes along with that. I would say every system relies on a rancher putting a collar on an animal in a way that you respect the animal, but don't lose the collar. Some would say Vence has a higher drop off rate of collars, that, you know, you just don't get them on right, so they fall off. I've worked with ranchers that have a 1 or 2% drop off rate. I've worked with others that have a 20% drop off rate. Some of that comes back to how, how well you learn how to collar the animal. You know, some of it could be in the make up. And each company is continually revising their collars to make them stay on the animal and not off, you know, falling off in the grass or the rocks where you don't want it to be. If you lose a Gallagher collar, you've got to go buy another one. If you lose a Vence collar, they send you another one. Again, pros, cons. Not bad or good.
>> Yeah, they're all different.
>> Yeah, if you get, every year, you're going to put your animals in a chute, fall and spring, you know, you have no problem saying like, well, it takes another minute to put this collar on while they're in the chute. You know, or take it off. It's not, it's not a big chore. But it takes time. I'm trying to think of other differences.
>> One thing you mentioned that most of the ranchers that got outfitted with virtual fence systems, in response to the Pearl Hill Fire, under some of the grants that you got, are still using it. What's your impression, even a little more broadly than that, with the ranches that you know that are using it, are all of them still using it? Do you know of any that have decided not to, either because of cost or feeling like it didn't work very well?
>> Let's see. I would say the folks that I was involved with, I bet 95 to plus 95% are still using it. Are they using it to its capacity? Sometimes not necessarily. And that goes back to, I think, how well they adapted to the software, you know, the part where you're actually using it on your computer.
>> Took some skill.
>> Yeah, it took some skills. And some folks felt comfortable with that. Some folks had a granddaughter or a grandkid do that, you know?
>> Yeah, a little more adept with the skilsaw.
>> Yeah, some are all over it. I mean, to the point where they're, you know, there's a rancher right outside of town here that put it in initially. You know, and I would call these innovative ranchers, you know, they're the type of folks that said, well, we're going to give it a try, regardless. And others are going to step back and watch and see how it goes. And so, yeah, they had to get through some of the problems with the initial, you know, product. And they gave their advice. And those products have changed because of that. But, you know, this one rancher, he's using it to graze wheats across his fallow fields. You know, because you can put fence up in a heartbeat, put the cows out there and knock the wheats down. He's using it to graze cheatgrass areas, infestations early in the spring, using it to push his animals up to the tops of ridges and hills that they never grazed ever in this whole three generations in ranch, of ranchers on that land. One of the comments I heard him make was, he says, you know, I've only been using about 30 or 40% of this whole place. He said, now I plan to use it all. So, you know, you can, and at the same time, he would say, it's not 100% accurate. It's got some bugs in it. It's got some slop in it. But you adjust to that, just like you slop to a fence that's kind of a little saggy, and you make your adjustments and you move on. You know?
>> The barbed wire has got a little slop in it too, turns out.
>> Exactly. But you've got a tool that can, you know, really, really change the way, the way you spend your time ranching. And I would say that. A lot of these folks are saying, you know, they've got more time now to do other things, whether that's personal or professional. But they're not doing half of the things they used to have to do, because they have a system out there that they can, they can manage. And I hear that from, you know, Gallagher vendor users, or Vence vendor users. And we just don't have many of the Halter vendor users yet in Washington. I did go to a conference where I heard a California rancher, who was using Halter, speak very highly of it, you know, so the ones, like I said at the beginning, it can make a good rancher great. And give you a lot more time to do the things you want to do. Or change the way you're managing that place. It can make a bad rancher worse. I mean, if you think it's going to solve all your problems, but you're not putting the time into it, yeah, you might drop off your use of it, would be my guess.
>> What are some other potential benefits you see if you could, you know, put on your thinking cap and look into the crystal ball, what are, can you see some ways that virtual fence could be used for habitat enhancement, fire mitigation, you know, whatever that might be? I realize I'm seeding your answer to the question. But, yeah, what do see as potential other benefits of virtual fence, and do you think it's here to stay?
>> I'll answer the last one first. I think, this is a broad assumption, but if you aren't looking into things as a rancher, like virtual fencing, and others are, think about the competition. I mean, think about them being able to produce that same pound of beef with half the money investment in the tool called fencing. You know, you're going to, it's going to be a competitive point where it's going to be hard to keep up with that technical advantage that people will have. Other folks doing the same thing. And the product they're trying to create, just like you are. So, yes, I think it's the future. And that's just from what I've seen. And I've had an opportunity to see some ranchers that were using it okay, well, and extremely well. And that's what I'm talking about. If you're using this tool extremely well, you're going to come out the other end better, much better for it, and have an advantage, I'd say.
>> And I recognize here to stay may be, you know, what we've got right here might be the Model T of virtual fence.
>> Yep.
>> And at some point, and probably it won't take very long, we'll have stuff that works better than a Model T.
>> Yep, and I've got some folks that were talking to me and interested, and they're working on, you know, a different kind of a system, and ear tag system that is more just for location. But it doesn't use cell phones or satellites at all. So, that's, you know, there's all this technology is coming out. And just for keeping track of your bulls or knowing where they are. Are they doing their job? And, again, most Vence, and here's another example, Vence typically doesn't tell you to collar bulls. Gallagher says, yeah, you can collar bulls. And the reason is the different type of collar. They tend to stay on. Gallagher's tend to stay on a bull. Whereas Vence's, they can't keep them on. Neither of them is going to do much good shocking them. They're going to do what they're going to do. But knowing where they're at is important. So, that technology, again, is going to be upfront, I think, in the way that the people are going to be looking at managing their herds. Other, you know, you mentioned one, you know, they're already doing it and researching it and following it up and seeing how well that works in terms of fire breaks. You know, putting a narrower bands of virtual fence around the outside of something you want to protect, and grazing it harder, and actually grazing it down to where you've created a fire break that's being tested. I mentioned earlier that, you know, it's happening already, where they're using it to keep livestock away from problem situations, like wolf dens or roundabout areas. Initially thoughts that I had were, well, if you can collar the cows, and [inaudible] collared wolf, why not have that collar you put on the wolves have a shock in it? When the wolf gets too close to the cow, give them a shock. There are some disagreement on whether that's the right thing to do, I guess, collar the wild animal. But at the same time, it might be hard, because you really can't get every wolf in a pack collared, so you'd have to assume that if one wolf got shocked and went running, the others would learn observationally and run as well. They may not. They may go, well, something happened to him. We're going to go, we're still interested in that calf over there. So, but I think those interaction between wildlife and livestock, there's still some things that might either today or eventually in the changes to technology give us even more ways to use it. They're already, I think all these companies are already going to be looking towards animal health. Vence, eventually, was bought out by Merck Pharmaceutical, the animal husbandry division of them. And their goal is for, you know, to have healthier and better producing animals on the landscape, you know, so the ability to check when they're in heat, the ability to check things that are stressing them, you know, that's all coming, I think, in these collars. And that's just going to be, excuse me, again, an advantage to those folks that are using this technology to run cows on a landscape. Especially, you know, large landscapes. That's what these things are meant for. I think, as I recall, the Halter system was initiated with smaller animals to begin with. And it's now growing into some of the bigger livestock. So, there's going to be a variety of choices, you know, ranging from small acreage up to the massive acres that get grazed in the Western landscapes. And a variety of companies that will be producing those.
>> Yeah, what you just said made me think regarding livestock wolf interactions, what if whatever devices are being used on the wolves could communicate with the virtual fence system being used on cows? So, like if a wolf comes within, you know, the signal range of radio tower that could at least alert the livestock owner that there's a wolf in the vicinity, even if there's no direct, you know, something, even if it doesn't directly prevent either the wolf from getting to the animals, or the livestock from moving that direction, even if it was like an alert system, that would be worth quite a bit.
>> Well, see now, you've generated a new thought in my brain. And that would be what if that collar on that wolf initiated the beep beep beep shock on the cows so that, you know, maybe within a mile, you get some distance that when that wolf is that close, cows would be
>> Pushed away from it?
>> I better move away from that.
>> Yeah.
>> I don't know, I don't know. Yeah. I think the jury is still out on how many ways we can think about to use it, and/or ask the industry to prepare something, to produce something that could really, you know, be a game changer in the industry. I've thought about sheep too. How do you keep domestic sheep away from, you know, wild sheep? But that one, it will take some more thought than I have to get through it. Because, you know, they're too far. Wild animals are far roaming. And that's the ticket. You know? And they can, and it's hard to get them collared, while it's an easier task to collar the domestic side of things.
>> Yeah, yeah. Well, I really appreciate what Conservation Northwest is doing. And I was not aware of the organization at all before you guys started working with these virtual fence systems. And I think, I really feel like that represents kind of a new model for, you know, what I often call wildlands grazing, where there's a lot more communication and integration and collaboration between people that know something about the wildlife that are out there. I mean, we're seeing this all over the place, like with Audubon, Audubon's bird friendly ranching certification, and, yeah, lots of programs like that that are I think both informing, but also rewarding ranching and grazing management that's done in a way that is promoting all of these other ecosystem goods and services. And I really am thankful for the role that Conservation Northwest has been playing in helping move that along a little bit so that we maybe get the car is here to stay, but if we can get from a Model T to a Mustang in 10 years instead of 50, that would be a good thing.
>> I appreciate those comments. And Conservation Northwest's Executive Director, my boss, recently put out a book, it kind of ties into this a little bit. And I just got my copy. I can't remember the title. But it's something like, it's about less radical ways to achieve conservation on the landscape, you know, compared to the older ways where we had timber wars and all that. And it's
>> Yeah, living [inaudible].
>> Yeah, it's his firm belief. And you can see it in reading this book. It's actually a great read. You know, the way he feels is he came to feel, and the way the organization is run now, is, you know, the real people that are affected the most by what goes on out here have to be listened to. You can have high ideals of a connected landscape. But without the people out there doing it, it's just not going to happen. And, you know, you kind of have to believe in it together. Like, for instance, if we believe, you know, your habitat is my forage, and we respect the right to use it for both, both of the goals of the people on the ground, we're all better for it. You know? So, virtual fence, when it came around, it didn't take me too long to get to my boss, my executive director, and say, this is a win, win, win for everybody. This is something that, you know, that he eventually wrote about in his book. You know, this is how people work together, common goals, and get it done. And you had different things you were expecting out of it. You know? We want to see connectivity and wildlife move across the landscape. And that habitat be in the best condition it can. And ranchers want to see their animals, you know, at a stocking rate that gives them the most dollar for the bang for the buck. And then this all just adds up to that. And it adds up to, you know, and most of their ranchers want to see that landscape in good condition too. They want to see that, you know, the right species out there, that they know are the most valuable for their gain, their weight gain on their animals, and for the landscape. So, yeah, it wasn't, wasn't too hard to get this one through. And yet we are the type of organization that we like to, we're more of a catalyst. We like to get things going, establish it, you know, once it's all in good hands and the people are using it. And we move onto the next thing that we need to work on. We're not giving up on virtual. And it's been a real joy for me to be able to work on it, because I've never seen, I can only compare it to, in my days of NRCS, when direct seeding, you know, came into being. No till drills and what not. Similar to that, but even actually more far reaching, I believe. And the good that it does for the landscape and the resources, as well as the wildlife.
>> Yeah, I agree. My most recent guest on the podcast, Andrew Coppin with Ranchbot, said that ranchers are the custodians of national capital across much of the United States, and in much of the world. And I appreciate the fact that you, your organization is helping ranchers do that well. And to your point about, you know, a healthy social approach to this, the historical, the historical approach by, you know, when people like Dan Dagget, who was eventually converted to being a ranching advocate, their previous approach was remove the people from the landscape, and that will fix everything. And I think we've realized, one, it didn't fix everything. And, two, that's probably not reasonable or achievable, even if it did work. And so I think, I think you and we are on the path to getting that figured out.
>> Yeah, agree 100% with you. And I've had a 30 year career with NRCS, and now a 15 year career with Conservation Northwest. And virtual fence made it too fun to retire. I'm just, it's just been a real enjoyable time in both of my careers to say I can, I can work with people on all sides of the idea of the environment and ranching and farming and wildlife and habitat, and have something that works for everybody, and it meets all the needs of the folks. So, it's been a joy to be involved with this.
>> Great. We'll let that be the good final word. Jay, thanks for your time.
>> Thank you so much.
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