'Sky eye' to track tagged cows
Updated on 28 August 2007
A herd of cows will have their every move monitored by satellite during a unique conservation experiment.
The blue grey and beef shorthorn cows in the Yorkshire Dales are being fitted with electronic collars containing a Global Positioning System (GPS) in a pilot scheme to help preserve rare vegetation.
The equipment - which is more commonly used to study wild animals - will be able to pinpoint the exact position of the cattle at any one time, down to minute details such as whether a cow is grazing, standing still or moving.
The herd of 50 cows taking part in the study grazes on 200 hectares of hill land in the Ingleborough National Nature Reserve in North Yorkshire.
A spokesman for the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority said the project would help landowners and farmers to improve the management of the wildlife on their land by finding out where the cows go, when they go to certain areas and what they eat when they get there.
Paul Evans, manager of the nature reserve, said: "The cattle are free to roam over pretty large areas so, at any one particular time, we don't always know exactly where they are or what they are doing. I think this is one of the first projects of its kind to use GPS collars on livestock - normally they are put on wild animals like polar bears and tigers to track their movements."
He added: "The idea is to find out where they go and at what times of the day and the year. We can then analyse the vegetation and terrain in those areas - for example grassland, peat bog or scrub.
"That will tell us what they prefer to eat during the different seasons of the year and this will help us to assess their impact on the local ecology.
"This detailed information on animal behaviour will help us develop management techniques to direct the cattle away from certain areas and into others."
The scheme is the latest phase of a five-year Limestone Country Project, which aims to preserve rare plants and flowers by encouraging farmers to return to mixed livestock grazing using hardy, native cattle breeds.
These news feeds are provided by an independent third party and Channel 4 is not responsible or liable to you for the same.
