A project looking at the impacts of high country sheep farming on biodiversity is proving fascinating for those involved.
The New Zealand Merino Company has been running the project for about 18 months, in conjunction with research done at the University of Canterbury.
Several years ago, researchers from the university fitted four global positioning system (GPS) collars on to merino sheep and they were tracked over several months on a high country station.
As a result of that exercise, some interesting information was obtained on the preferred habitat and movement pattern of the sheep, NZM research and development manager Dr Simon Causer said.
A lot of the information gained was not "brand new" to farmers, who had a good feel for what areas of their properties their sheep preferred, but there were some interesting findings, including how sheep differed quite a lot in their behaviour.
Some ranged for "enormous" distances while others stayed in relatively small areas, Dr Causer said.
NZM then decided to use the collars to look at what influence sheep were having on the high country environment, in order to be able to tell a "much stronger story" in the market concerning sustainability in high country farming.
Collars were to be put on sheep for three months last summer on properties in the Mackenzie district but the factory making them was destroyed in the Christchurch earthquake. The plan now was to do it next summer, using about 24 collars.
As part of the project, a large survey of eight high country stations throughout the South Island has been done, with about 350 vegetation monitoring sites and between 50 and 60 aquatic monitoring sites.
The company suspected the environmental impact of sheep farming would become more of a focus in the future and "we've got a good story to tell".
Describing it as a fascinating project, Dr Causer rated it as among the most interesting he had been involved in.