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By 05/05/2021
A new study that used satellite imagery to monitor the movements of cows and tule elk in the Point Reyes National Seashore could help the park manage grazing conflicts and monitor the spread of Johne’s disease.
Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, collected satellite images along with GPS collar data and in-person observations from 2010 to 2017 to track the animals. They found that cattle were the primary drivers of the elks choice of habitat, and that the elk avoided cattle and tended to stick to their own grazing areas on and off ranchland.
Still, the study’s lead author, Lacey Hughey, a former U.C. Santa Barbara researcher who now works for the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, said that won’t necessarily always be true. “That can always change as you get major climate change, or more cattle, or a lot more elk,” she said.
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“We also didn’t know very much about which habitats elk preferred in this part of the park and how the presence of cattle might influence an elk’s decision to spend its time in one place over another.”
The researchers set out to answer these questions with two large datasets generated by the park GPS monitoring data from collared elk, and field-based transect surveys of the elk. What was missing, however, was information on the cows.
“We knew quite a bit about where the elk were, but we didn’t have any information about where the cows were, except that they were inside the fences,” she said. Knowing the precise number and location of cows relative to the elk herd would be necessary to understand how both species interact in a pastoral setting.
Spotting cows from space universityofcalifornia.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from universityofcalifornia.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Watching cows from space
Cows from above. Credit:
Umkehrer / Getty Images.
When looking down upon the Earth through the eyes of a satellite, what would you choose to look at? For students at the University of California Santa Barbara, they watched cows from space.
In a recent paper published in
Biological Conservation, a team of students, along with ecologist Doug McCauley, scrutinised satellite images of cattle herds around Point Reyes National Seashore, USA, to track how wildlife and livestock interact.
Their rigorous cow spotting showed that wild elk had learned to avoid cattle in the area, choosing different places to forage in order to coexist.