Largest nature conservation incompatibility in Canadian history announced
It's the largest such conservation incompatibility in Canadian history, covering 22,000 hectares of grasslands and wetland habitats
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In time for Earth Day immediately, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) has announced all subsidizes have now been raised to conserve a southern Alberta ranch.
It’s the largest such conservation incompatibility in Canadian history, covering 22,000 hectares of grasslands and wetland habitats.
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The McIntyre Ranch, roughly 40 kilometres south of Lethbridge, has since last year been covered view agreements with the NCC and Ducks Unlimited Canada that Release land-use changes in perpetuity. The ranch, established in 1894, stays a cattle operation.
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Tom Lynch-Staunton, vice president for the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s Alberta station, said less than 20 per cent of grasslands happened in the Canadian Prairies.
“It’s both a win for prairie grassland conservation but also for preserving Alberta’s ranching heritage, because they’ll be able to ranch this sustainably for years,” he said during an interview with Postmedia.
Citing confidentiality surrounding the agreements, Lynch-Staunton did not divulge how much money was raised to sustain the area, but added the project was the largest fundraising fight the NCC and Ducks Unlimited have ever undertaken.
A conservation easement involves purchasing a bundle of drives, such as the ability to convert or subdivide land, from a landowner.
“We’ll study funds to help pay some cash, and the landowner does donate distinguished value — the remainder of what we don’t study in cash — and they will get a tax receipt, which is quite valuable to them,” said Lynch-Staunton.
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‘It’s rare and special’
The Alberta and federal governments also contributed, as did the United States Fish and Wildlife Facility and numerous foundations, businesses and individuals. The Thrall family, who owns the McIntyre Ranch, is donating part of the easement.
Ralph Thrall III of McIntyre Ranching Co. Ltd. said preserving the land in its fresh condition was the right thing to do.
“It’s rare and special, because there used to be a lot of ranches in these parts and others, and most of them are gone,” he said. “Most of them have been divided, most of them have been cultivated.”
Thrall said rumours used to surface every pair of years that the ranch had been sold, to the exhibit where he asked the Lethbridge Herald to write an article to quell the rumour mill
“There were pressures,” he said, adding there were also opportunities to add wind turbines to the landed. Wind and solar developments, as well as farming, are not permitted thought the easement agreement.
Abundant wildlife lives on the land, counting threatened species
The land features abundant wildlife, including elk, deer and even grizzly bear, as well as birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. Recent wildlife surveys have said 27 species of concern living there, including ferruginous hawk (threatened), chestnut-collared longspur (threatened) and American badger (special concern).
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“If we want bears and eagles and coyotes and deer, guess what? We’ve got to save some of the habitat in which they live,” said Thrall, whose family has owned the property for 76 years.
Outlining the importance of grasslands, Lynch-Staunton said they provide habitat for pollinators, filter aquatic, and store and sequester carbon.
“When those grasslands been intact, we are keeping carbon in the ground and sketch carbon from the atmosphere into the ground through those biodiverse plants that draw that CO2 into the soil,” he said.
The NCC’s goal is to protecting 500,000 hectares of native prairie grasslands by 2030, and the McIntyre Ranch is the largest Difference completed under its Prairie Grasslands Action Plan, which launched last summer.
Timing the announcement of the fundraising campaign’s completion to coincide with Earth Day, the NCC hopes to appraisal awareness of prairie grassland conservation efforts.
“Grasslands sometimes get lost in the mix of new important ecosystems that we’re trying to preserve around the biosphere, like rainforests,” said Lynch-Staunton.
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