The Virtually Fencing Free project, funded through the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund, aims to drive large-scale adoption of drought-resilient grazing strategies across all remote Northern Australian cattle properties.

The five-year pilot project is testing how effectively eShepherd virtual fencing neckbands allow graziers to modify grazing systems. The goal is to maximise pasture performance, rainfall response, and animal production, while improving long-term land condition.

A virtual fence is an invisible line in the landscape that can be created on a digital map using GPS technology. The technology manages grazing cattle behind a virtual boundary, rather than physical fencing.

Cattle fitted with the eShepherd neckbands.

The eShepherd neckbands allow graziers to monitor and control cattle movement remotely in real time, enabling them to make earlier, better-informed management decisions. This leads to healthier livestock and pastures more able to respond when the drought breaks.

Adopting virtual fencing technology could help graziers to:

• reduce mustering and fencing costs
• improve pasture condition
• increase pasture production by remotely modifying digital paddock boundaries
• protect sensitive landscapes and vulnerable areas of bare soil from cattle
• use pasture more effectively

The trial is being delivered in partnership with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries at the Spyglass Beef Research Facility in the Upper Burdekin, featuring a range of land types typical of the region. The research facility has no mobile connectivity, so it will be a chance to test whether Starlink internet can support agtech adoption in remote areas, where poor connectivity prevents wider uptake. Find out more about the project.

NQ Dry Tropics field officers, Claire Cornel and Callum Olver, with one of the transmitters used to provide connectivity with the neckbands to maintain virtual fences.