Spatial Distribution Of Beef Cattle On A New Zealand Hill Country Farm: Monitoring The Use Of Streams And Wet Areas

Grazing livestock are an important source of contamination of freshwater, particularly when they have direct access to streams. Cattle in particular contribute to riparian habitat deterioration through stream bank destruction and direct defecation and urination in streams. Exclusion of stock or planting of riparian areas, are the most common catchment management methods used to protect waterways. Given the relatively low returns from beef and sheep farming, both of these strategies are very expensive and often logistically prohibitive in steep   hill county landscapes. Despite this, policy trends indicate that fencing of streams in agricultural catchments may become mandatory in the future. It is important that we understand how much time cattle spend in and around hill country streams and wet areas (wetlands and hill side seeps), in order to quantify the likely environmental benefits from such policies. The current study examined cattle movement data obtained using Global Positioning System (GPS) collars from experiments undertaken at Massey University’s hill country research farm, Tuapaka, near Palmerston North, to investigate the amount of time cattle spent in and around streams and wet areas. Animal movement data were collected over seven grazing events, in three winter periods (2012, 2013 and 2015). Permanent streams and wet areas were identified using a digital elevation model derived from 1m LiDAR data, aerial RGB images and RTK measurements. Cattle spent 3.3 – 6% (48 – 86 min/day) of their day in streams and wet areas consistently across the 7 data collections. Cattle spent more time in streams and wet areas during the afternoon. There are differences in the median amount of time individual animals spend in non-risk areas. Further research is necessary to evaluate how we can influence the amount of time cattle spend in riparian areas on hill country and how stream bank behaviour varies at different times of the year.