Virtual Fencing
By replacing traditional barbed wire with GPS-based technology, we improve wildlife movement, protect sensitive landscapes, and provide landowners with flexible tools for managing livestock and restoring habitat.
Our Approach
Supporting ranchers who are rebuilding the sagelands with tools that benefit both cattle and wildlife.
After the 2020 fires destroyed hundreds of miles of barbed wire fencing, our team worked with ranchers, Conservation Districts, Tribes, and state partners to pilot virtual fencing as a tool that supports both wildlife and working lands. By removing hard fences and guiding cattle with GPS based collars, we’re opening up habitat, improving connectivity, and helping landowners rotate grazing more efficiently while protecting riparian areas and sensitive species.
Current Focus
Work We’re Doing to Achieve Virtual Fencing Goals
Expanding Virtual Fencing
Work is underway to expand the use of virtual fencing as a wildlife-friendly alternative to traditional barbed wire across the shrub steppe.
By partnering with ranchers, Tribes, Conservation Districts, and state agencies, the program helps deploy GPS-enabled collars and digital fence lines that guide cattle without fragmenting habitat. This approach reduces fence-related wildlife injuries, restores movement pathways for mule deer and other species, and gives landowners more flexible grazing management tools.
Field demonstrations and pilot projects continue to refine how virtual fencing performs in different terrain and vegetation types, ensuring it can scale effectively across the region.
Fostering Pathways
Alongside implementation, the program works to build the policy, funding, and technical support needed for broader adoption.
Staff coordinate with land managers to integrate virtual fencing into grazing plans, wildfire recovery strategies, and habitat restoration projects. Outreach to ranchers and local communities helps increase comfort with the technology and highlights its ecological benefits.
Together, these efforts are laying the groundwork for a landscape where livestock operations and wildlife movement can coexist more seamlessly.
Impact & Results
A History of Virtual Fencing
Virtual fencing has emerged as an innovative tool that supports both wildlife connectivity and sustainable ranching. Through partnerships, research, and on-the-ground implementation, Conservation Northwest has helped advance its adoption across the Northwest.
Recognizing and advancing the landscape scale potential of virtual fencing
Supporting landowners with practical, ecological, and economic benefits
Providing leadership through research and statewide guidance
Recognizing and advancing the landscape scale potential of virtual fencing
CNW quickly became an early leader in virtual fence technology, promoting it for its wildlife connectivity benefits and its value to ranchers recovering from wildfire. Staff acted as a bridge between vendors, funders, and producers, viewing virtual fencing as a rare win win that supports major connectivity goals while strengthening long term partnerships with landowners.
Supporting landowners with practical, ecological, and economic benefits
Virtual fencing reduces the need for hard fencing and gives landowners an affordable tool for managing grazing across large landscapes. It helps protect sensitive habitats, improve native vegetation and soil health, increase carbon sequestration, target invasive weeds, and lower labor and fencing costs. Herd management tools allow ranchers to track livestock locations, seasonal movements, and forage use, and to exclude animals from recently burned areas to support recovery.
Providing leadership through research and statewide guidance
In 2025, at WSRRI’s request, SHP staff produced an extensive report—Virtual Fence Information Gathering and Synthesis of Management Recommendations—based on interviews with dozens of ranchers, researchers, and three virtual fence vendors. The report is now widely distributed, helping landowners match products to their needs and giving funders clarity on vendor differences. This work reflects SHP’s long term commitment to advancing virtual fencing as a tool for improving connectivity.
Impact & Results
Our Key Accomplishments for Virtual Fencing
From protecting critical landscapes to advancing collaborative forest restoration, these efforts deliver lasting benefits for wildlife, habitat connectivity, and climate resilience.
Expanding Adoption
Scaling Virtual Fencing Across Hundreds of Thousands of Acres
Between 2021 and 2026, the program funded or facilitated virtual fencing with 11 landowners across more than 400,000 acres, collaring over 3,500 cattle on private, Tribal, state, federal, and NGO lands, and helping spur more than 25 additional projects statewide while advancing NRCS and WSRRI cost share support for virtual fence adoption.
British Columbia Pilot
Launching the First Virtual Fence Project in British Columbia
In 2024, the program enabled the first virtual fence project in British Columbia by purchasing base stations for a rancher managing 8,000 hectares of post fire grazing lands, preventing more than 15 miles of burned fence from being rebuilt and accelerating virtual fence adoption across the province.
Outreach & Education
Building Regional and National Support for Virtual Fencing
Since the early 2020s, the program has led regional and national outreach to scale virtual fencing, reaching thousands through workshops, presentations, and a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation–supported pilot project and video, and sharing lessons with researchers, ranchers, Tribes, and conservation partners across the U.S. and Canada.
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