“SpaceCows” sounds like a sci-fi film where the bovines start to turn on the humans.
Key points:
- SpaceCows is a project led by the CSIRO in partnership with the federal government
- First Nations rangers and contractors will catch and tag 1,000 wild livestock in northern Australia
- Combining AI, satellite use and Indigenous knowledge, it’s delivering a large-scale remote herd management system
But it’s also the name of a project run by a group of Indigenous rangers in remote Australia, conducting a herd surveillance project via a space-based satellite system.
CSIRO senior scientist Andrew Hoskins said the tracking project was probably “the largest … from a wildlife or a buffalo tracking perspective, that’s ever been done”, particularly in Australia.
He’s overseeing the four-year program, which involves catching, tagging, and tracking 1,000 wild cattle and buffalo in north-east Arnhem land in the Northern Territory and Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria — across a mere 22,000 square kilometres.
An unlikely mustering gang
At a remote mustering camp in the wilds of Arnhem Land, huddled nearly on top of a campfire, an unlikely gang of stockmen, scientists and rangers wait for first light, to head out in bull catchers, helicopters, and four-wheelers.
Over several weeks, they must muster 1,000 buffalo in some of the most remote and difficult terrain in the north.
Once caught, the animals are fitted with a tiny satellite panel on an ear before being set free.
“The novel part, I suppose, is then that links through to a space-based satellite system,” Dr Hoskins said.
“So, while we take recordings, we then send them off by a satellite and into our data systems.”
The mission has been years in the making, hindered partly by COVID-19, as well as other disruptions.
“Delays with the tags, the technology, [the] US Postal Service going on strike … you name it, it’s just [been] ‘Is this ever going to kick off the ground and get happening?'” Mimal ranger coordinator Alex Ernst said.
The aim of the project is to better inform the rangers’ decisions around managing feral animals.
“A large part of that is really giving us a better understanding of how many animals there are and then also understanding how those animals are then moving across the landscape and utilising it,” Dr Hoskins said.
A powerful beast
Buffalo are infamous for the way they thrash the country.
The Mimal rangers estimate there are about 22,000 buffalo just on the land they oversee.
“There’s too many … they’re sort of definitely concentrated to springs and waterways,” mustering chopper pilot Nick Pasquale said.
Mr Pasquale regularly witnesses their large numbers from the sky, and their legacy on the ground.
“Their impact on the environment is probably far greater than anything else we have,” he said.
“Pigs are bad, and feral cattle and horses … but yeah, the water buffalo, certainly … [on] those really sensitive areas, the springs and that, they have a huge impact.”
Buffalo mustering is a dangerous occupation, and a moment’s complacency can be deadly.
“It’s a pretty crazy job to do, too — dangerous,” ranger Aiden Lindsay said.
“But you always got to keep motivated, and just gotta be on point, how you do it, the roping, all that stuff — it gets you panicked a little bit.
“You got to not fear the buffalo much because if you do feel a bit afraid, you’re going to get yourself hurt someday.”
For the Indigenous rangers, it’s also an occupation with an important history and generational legacy.
“I used to see my uncle doing mustering around here when I was a little boy,” landowner Robert Redford Senior said.
“I used to follow him and see how to do it.”
He’s carrying forth a legacy of caring for country with an out-of-this-world twist.
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