I have recently joined a team at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) to help analyse data from their Cattle, Land and Fire (CaLF) project in the Kimberley. The project has been using GPS collars to track the movements of cattle on several cattle stations around the AWC's Mornington Sanctuary in the Kimberley. The aim is to assess how the cattle interact with the EcoFire program, a precise fire management program that uses small prescribed burns to maximise the area of “old growth” vegetation in the landscape, as such vegetation is critical for the survival of many species.

I have been analysing the tracks of individual cows in an attempt to identify distinct phases of movement behaviour. This will allow us to identify phases of foraging, sedentary or direct movement and integrate this information with a range of landscape layers such as 'time since fire' or 'distance to water' and identify the key predictors of foraging behaviour in this landscape.

The analysis is still ongoing but we have been making great progress and hopefully there will be a paper coming out in the next few months

#Wildlife #Ecology #AnimalMovement #GPS #Conservation #Science #MovementEcology #Foraging #Grazing #Fire #Kimberley #Australia