Cows, Hikers and Mountain Bikers Coexist at This National Monument, With Help From New Technology
Established in 2017, the Cotoni-Coast Dairies national monument in California is now open to the public
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Hikers and mountain bikers are peacefully coexisting with cows at a new recreation area in California, thanks to a novel technology.
When the new Cotoni-Coast Dairies national monument opened to the public on August 16, the 5,800-acre property officially began welcoming human adventurers. However, for years, the coastal site just north of Santa Cruz has also hosted grazing cattle from nearby ranches under federal leases, reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Kurtis Alexander.
To manage interactions between the two groups of users, the Bureau of Land Management is testing a high-tech system—and so far, it seems to be working, reports NPR’s Jerimiah Oetting. Officials have outfitted nearly 100 cows with solar-powered smart collars that allow ranchers to remotely control where the bovines roam.
Quick fact: When was Cotoni-Coast Dairies designated?
President Barack Obama established Cotoni-Coast Dairies in January 2017 as the onshore unit of the California Coastal National Monument.
The virtual fencing system, developed by the company Halter, allows ranchers to draw imaginary boundaries on the landscape. The collars are linked to a GPS satellite and a mobile app, which ranchers can use to track their cattle in real-time.
When a cow crosses the virtual line, the animal’s collar beeps—a sign they’ve gone in the wrong direction and should turn around. If they keep going, the collar vibrates. Eventually, it delivers a light electrical shock. (The cows have been trained to understand these signals.)
Land managers say the system is a win-win for everyone involved. For one, it’s a more affordable and efficient alternative to miles of physical fencing, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars to install and needs regular maintenance, per the San Francisco Chronicle. The virtual fencing system, meanwhile, costs $72 per year per collar, plus an upfront fee of $4,500.
The cows still have plenty of freedom to roam around, but there’s less of a risk that they’ll wander onto busy trails or into ecologically sensitive restoration areas. Land managers can also direct them toward areas where their grazing might be beneficial, such as places with lots of invasive weeds or flammable vegetation. Human visitors, meanwhile, can enjoy unobstructed views of the scenic landscape.
“You’d [otherwise] have barbed-wire fences running across the property with people hiking and riding mountain bikes,” says Zachary Ormsby, the Central Coast field manager for the Bureau of Land Management, to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The pilot project is funded by the Foundation for America’s Public Lands, the congressionally chartered nonprofit that supports the Bureau of Land Management. Initially, the collars are being tested on cows that belong to the Pastorino family, which has been leasing grazing land at Cotoni-Coast Dairies for roughly 25 years, per NPR. But if all goes well, officials hope to eventually expand it to two other cattle operations at the site, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
Over the past eight years, the Bureau of Land Management and other partners have been busy figuring out how best to manage the site, which also includes archaeological sites from the region’s original inhabitants, the Cotoni people (pronounced “Cha-toni,” per the Santa Cruz Sentinel’s Aric Sleeper).
So far, crews and volunteers have built nine miles of multiuse trails at the site, which they hope to eventually expand to 27 miles. In the future, some of the routes will be accessible to wheelchair users.
“It’s just kind of unrivaled, in my opinion, and offers something completely new to visitors of the area and residents of the area,” says Katy Peterson, a spokesperson for the Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship, a local nonprofit that worked on the trails, to Lookout Santa Cruz’s Carly Heltzel. “And I just hope everyone has as much fun out on the trails as we had bringing them together.”
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