This story is part of a series following people who get up close to grizzly bears, as the debate rages on about whether they should remain protected by the Endangered Species Act.
It felt like it was starting to rain. But actually, it was just cow spit, flying out of their mouths as they resisted the head gate they were being funneled through, one by one.
They were getting outfitted with solar powered, GPS collars that cinch down like a belt.
“I’ve only been hit in the head once so far,” Ben Anson said in between wrestling cattle to collar them.
The 33-year-old manages the historic Pitchfork Ranch, in northwest Wyoming, which is an hour and a half southeast from Yellowstone National Park.
“You know when you get punched in the nose and it makes your eyes water?” Anson asked, from beneath the brim of his pageboy cap. “I was crying there for a second.”
But it’s all worth it. Previously Anson had never been able to track the over 1000 head of cattle he’s responsible for. Now, he’ll see them all as dots on an app, created by the company, Halter.
The technology is booming in New Zealand and now companies, like Halter, are expanding in the U.S. Similar to electric dog collars, the cattle will hear a beep and feel vibrations when they approach the invisible lines Anson draws on the app. If they don’t turn back, they’ll get a small shock.
“If I see a cow off by herself and she's been there for three days, there's something that went wrong there, and that's something I can go then investigate,” Anson said.
Ranches in northwest Wyoming — and around the Mountain West — are turning to virtual fences to cut labor costs, prevent grazing overuse and get rid of barbed wire, which opens up migration corridors for elk or pronghorn.
For Anson, preventing conflicts with grizzly bears is also a big motivator for using the new tracking technology.
“ I used to be able to keep track of all the bears,” Anson said, sipping coffee inside a cabin on the ranch during a break. “I was seeing, you know, 12 individual bears in a year and then 16 and then 20. And finally within probably the last three years, I can't really even keep track of the individual bears that I see in a year.”
Protected by the Endangered Species Act since the ’70s, grizzly numbers have rebounded in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Anson said stream out of the towering snow-dotted mountains and gobble up calves like cheeseburgers.
“I've watched bears try to eat calves outta cows as they were being born,” he said. “The way the rules are right now, I really can't do anything about it besides try to haze that bear.”
He can also complain to wildlife managers about problem bears. Sometimes they intervene. As of late September, a federal report says at least 16 grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem were killed for attacking cattle this year.
But the state wildlife agency tells him where the grizzlies are. And now Anson can use the virtual fences to move his livestock away from high conflict areas, so both his cows and the grizzlies can stay safe. He can also find cattle carcasses quicker so he can get reimbursed by the state and remove them before they attract more predators.
“ I think it is very much at the cutting edge of carnivore conflict,” said Travis Brammer, who was calling out each cow’s number to plug into the app.
Brammer is the conservation director at the Property and Environment Research Center, which helps landowners manage conflicts with predators.
The conservation group helped pay for Pitchfork Ranch’s collars, in addition to the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Rickett Family Foundation. The company Kateri Carbon is also paying for collars as part of its carbon credit program.
Cost can be a big barrier, but organizations like this are stepping up to help.
“What it boils down to is making sure that the landowners and the people who deal with these conflicts on a day-to-day basis feel equipped to address them,” Brammer explained.
Later, the once riled up cows calmly huddled together in the corral, with GPS collars dangling from their necks.
Each of them now popped up as a blue dot on Anson’s app.
“If you zoom in on 'em, you can click on 'em, see which animal it is,” he said, scrolling through his iPhone.
After hours of collaring, Anson’s hands and jeans were covered in mud and cow saliva, which is all in a day’s work.
“I'm actually pretty clean,” Anson said.
The cows were also vaccinated and bloodtested, protecting them from disease. And, with the collars, they’ll have an extra edge against grizzlies when the bears leave their dens next spring.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
