Valais cantonal programme
The Canton of Valais and Alpes-éco are equipping the livestock guardian dogs of the Valais alps. The programme is under way, and most of the dogs already work with a tracker.
Official herd protection programme of the Canton of Valais, run in partnership with Alpes-éco Schweiz AG.
The programme
Valais is the second Swiss canton by number of livestock guardian dogs, after Graubünden. With the return of the wolf and growing pressure on alpine pastures, herd protection has become a major issue for farmers, municipalities and the canton.
The programme brings a complementary digital tool. Not a surveillance system : concrete daily help, to know your dogs better, understand their work and anticipate risky situations.
One canton, one programme, one platformA first
The Canton of Valais is the first Swiss canton to deploy such a system across its whole territory, and one of the very first livestock guardian dog monitoring programmes in the world.
The programme goes beyond predator attack prevention. It covers the dog's whole life cycle : nutrition, health, breeding, physical condition, management, with individual data for every animal.
Where the programme stands
The roll-out is well under way. The canton holds the complete guardian dog database, and farms are being equipped one after another.
of the Valais livestock guardian dogs already carry a tracker and are followed in the App-écho. The remaining farms are visited over the course of the season.
1
Your account is created
You receive an e-mail confirming that your App-écho access has been created. Do check your junk folder. You log in at app-echo.ch, from the computer or the phone.
2
Setting up at your farm
An Alpes-éco technician comes to your farm, hands over the trackers, sets them up with you and shows you the application. Count on less than half an hour.
3
You are autonomous
The application and the equipment were designed with farmers, for farmers. Heidi then accompanies you at whatever pace suits you.
The equipment, the Tracking Prime
Every guardian dog in the programme carries a Tracking Prime tracker. Position, activity and current conditions are transmitted continuously, with no action from the farmer.
Transmission
The tracker transmits over the 4G LTE-M network. For pasture sectors with no coverage, the platform supports other transmission networks. No alp is left without a solution.
The data transmitted
Satellite position every five minutes, activity level, battery, temperature and weather conditions. Everything is stored and stays available in the animal's full history.
The four activity levels
Each dog's movement is analysed continuously and sorted into rest, ordinary, extraordinary and at-risk activity. That reading is what triggers the alerts and feeds the analyses.
Effort and condition
The locomotion energy cost measures movement effort over time, against the animal's own baseline. An indicator of fitness and welfare, season after season.
Trackers for the flocks too
The programme does not stop at the dogs. The canton also provides trackers for herbivores, sheep, goats and cattle, in two specific situations.
After an attack
When a flock has just been attacked, the canton equips the animals to follow what happens next : the scattering, the areas the flock now avoids, the restless nights, the return to calm. The farmer is supported with data, not with impressions.
Ahead of an official test
Before and during the official tests, the equipped herbivores give the reading that was missing : the real distance between the dogs and the flock, how well the batch holds together, the behaviour of both sides in the same conditions and on the same clock.
Geo-zones, the perimeters of the programme
Official geo-zones mark out where guardian dogs are used. They are defined and validated by the authority, stay read-only for the farmer, and form the basis of the prevention system meant for the public.
Inside them, the farmer cuts out up to six sub-zones to pin down the sector actually grazed, and chooses how they switch on : by calendar, by geo-detection as soon as a dog walks in, or by hand from the phone. He also has his own personal zones, for his own alerts.
The authority validates, the farmer refines
GZO, official geo-zone
Official perimeter for guardian dog use, defined and validated by the canton. It is the basis of the prevention system.
S-GZO, sub-geo-zone
Prevention sectors set up by the farmer inside a GZO, with three activation modes : schedule, geo-detection, manual.
GZP, occasional geo-zone
Zone drawn by the farmer to watch for crossings by his dogs or livestock. It is the only zone that triggers an exit alert.
GZE, exclusion geo-zone
Forbidden zone. Immediate alert if an animal enters. Useful for a roadside, a dangerous sector or a neighbouring property.
The App-écho day to day
Every farmer in the programme has full access, from the computer as well as the phone. The modules are sorted into three families : what is happening now, what has happened, and what gets configured.
Maps
Each dog's position on satellite imagery, its activity, its battery, the active geo-zones and the reports from the area.
- Live 2D, the real-time map
- Live 3D, the same reading on the relief
History
Everything measured stays available. Heidi reads each calculation with you and says what is normal and what is not.
- 2D animations, the season replayed
- Routes, the day in a single glance
- Interactions 3D, the surfaces actually used
- Performance, distance, effort and activities
Management
Your zones, your animals, your batches and your alerts. Everything is set from the phone as from the computer, with immediate effect.
- Geo-zones, editor and prevention configurator
- Animals, records and individual settings
- Groups, to watch a batch together
- Notifications, sharing options and settings
Two analyses born of this programme
They existed nowhere else. They were asked for by the Valais field and built within the cantonal programme.
Herd fidelity
Continuously measures the distance between a dog and its batch : median distance, P90, P95, and the time spent under thirty, one hundred and three hundred metres, by day, night and twenty-four-hour cycle. This is how you see whether a dog really holds its flock or drifts away at night.
Geo-zone analysis
Answers a simple question with heavy consequences : who left, who entered, when, and for how long. Every episode is recorded with its opening time, its duration and its coordinates. The report copies or exports to PDF, ready to join a file.
Modules developed within the Valais cantonal programme on livestock guardian dogs.
Alerts that explain
An alert that rings without explaining anything ends up ignored. That is where everything is decided. The App-écho watches six families of events : leaving a pasture, entering forbidden ground, the at-risk activity of a single dog, the sudden unrest of a whole batch, the theft of a device, and a forgotten share of an official zone with the authorities.
Heidi does not merely alert. She says what happened and why she is disturbing you : the movements observed, the time, the elevation change, the predator reports from the area, the state of the rest of the flock.
An at-risk activity alert waits for your answer from the field : true, false, or I do not know. That reply is what sharpens the system for that animal, not for an average one.
The animal first, the device after
Every dog has its record : identity, breed, sex, date of birth, keeper, alp. For guardian dogs that identity comes from the canton and stays locked : it is the official register, and the farmer cannot change it.
The tracker is merely equipment assigned to the animal. If it fails, it moves onto another dog in two gestures and nothing is lost : the history stays with the animal, never with the box. That is what guarantees data continuity across the dog's whole life.
Everyone gains something
That is what makes the programme last. Nobody takes part out of obligation.
The farmer
Concrete daily help : knowing your dogs better, anticipating risks, following feeding and breeding, receiving targeted and explained alerts.
The canton
A unique database on Valais guardian dogs. Objective data to guide the cantonal herd protection policy.
The flock
Better monitored, better managed and more effective dogs. Active prevention that directly benefits the safety of Valais flocks.
Data protection
Alpes-éco publishes no data. Your data is your data, and yours only.
The exact position is never public
What reaches the public maps is the presence of an active sector, never an animal's position nor its keeper's identity.
No transfer to third parties
Under Swiss law, Alpes-éco does not transfer, sell or share any data. The programme's data stays hosted in Switzerland.
The canton keeps control
The official geo-zones and their publication belong to the authority. It decides what is published, to whom and at what pace.
