- The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food is partially funding a system known as virtual fencing for Utah farmers.
- Virtual fencing will aid ranchers after last summer's Monroe Canyon Fire.
- The fire scorched about 74,000 acres, leaving large swaths of grazing land unusable.
MONROE, Sevier County — Virtual fencing technology is helping ranchers in central Utah manage livestock and protect fragile land after the Monroe Canyon Fire burned tens of thousands of acres last summer.
The fire scorched about 74,000 acres, leaving large swaths of grazing land unusable and forcing ranchers to find new ways to manage cattle and sheep.
State officials said burned areas need time to recover before animals return.
"Typically, after a fire, we want to let vegetation have two growing seasons before it gets impacted by grazing," said Tom Tippets, with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.
The blaze also destroyed fencing across parts of the range, adding financial strain for ranchers already dealing with limited grazing space. Tippets said rebuilding traditional fences and hiring riders to herd cattle away from burned areas can be costly and labor-intensive.
"We calculate that it costs about somewhere between $20,000 to $23,000 a mile," he said. "More than 60 miles were burned."
To help, the department is partially funding a system known as virtual fencing, and $600,000 has been allocated to pay for the virtual collars through the department's grazing improvement program.
The technology uses GPS-enabled collars placed around an animal's neck. Ranchers set digital boundaries, and the collars respond when animals approach those limits. The devices emit warning beeps first, followed by an electric shock if the animal continues forward.
"It's a lot of amps, not a lot of volts. It's enough to make sure that you got hit. It's by no means a torture device," Tippets said. "It's a beep, a beep, a beep, then a shock strong enough that they know what's happening and want to move away from that stimulus."
About 1,500 of the roughly 1,600 cattle affected by the fire are now using the collars, according to the department. Tippets said they haven't used the collars on many sheep.
"We've seen somewhere between 95(%) and 99% success on cattle that have been trained, meaning they've had those collars on for more than two weeks," Tippets said.
Without this technology, Tippets said, ranchers would struggle.
"If they couldn't control where their cows were at, they wouldn't be able to use the allotments during the summer or in the middle of the drought. And feed is very short across the entire landscape, across the entire state. And if they didn't have the ability to use some of that forage, they would be facing large amounts of feed bills," he said.
He said vegetation in the area is beginning to recover, particularly in higher elevations where perennial grasses are returning.
The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food is offering the technology to ranchers impacted by any of last year's wildfires, though its use is currently concentrated in the Monroe Canyon area.
