During hikes in the Alpine region, incidents with mother cows and guard dogs occur more and more often. The animals are exposed to enormous stress in the process and the confrontations may lead to accidents. In order to counteract this problem, Graubünden, in cooperation with Outdooractive, has initiated an innovative pilot project.
One animal per herd have been equipped with a transmitter that transmits the animal’s location to a server every 30 minutes. This information is transferred to the Outdooractive platform within 24 hours. Afterwards, the pastures used are shown to visitors and the owners of the animals on the map.
This enables Graubünden to inform outdoor sports enthusiasts before they start their route and to guide them specifically to safe areas where no grazing animals will be disturbed. A QR code attached to fences on site, serve those who decide on a spontaneous trip to share the data and find information quickly. In the future some grazing animals will also be equipped with transmitters on around 8.000 alpine pastures in Austria. The transmitted information will be visible in the online hiking maps of the Alpine Club and will be transferred to all Outdooractive maps.
In the long term, conflicts between agriculture and tourism can be minimized and mutual understanding expanded.
