Liisa Jeffrey, executive director of Peace Country Beef and Forage Association (PCBFA), said the funding offered by the RSP is a good fit for her organization.

“We’re a forage-based research association and all of the research and everything that we are doing very much ties in with the goals of that program,” said Jeffrey.

This year, grant recipients for the 2024-2025 program include academic institutions, Indigenous organizations, non-profits and grazing associations. The RSP is funded by a portion of rental fees collected from grazing disposition holders on Crown land. The money is then reinvested into projects supporting responsible stewardship across Alberta’s rangelands.

“That’s money coming from ranchers set aside to benefit ranchers. It’s a good concept that the government has come up with,” said Lindsye Murfin, general manager of the Western Stock Growers Association.

The projects for this year include education and community outreach, adaptive grazing practices, conservation strategies, grassland bird conservation and bee biodiversity surveys.

Murfin said they submitted their application for the program in fall 2024, and funding was approved in March 2025.

The WSGA’s project is looking to develop a market for ecosystem services that would work best for ranchers.

“We have an index that we developed that measures ecosystem health, and you could take that, apply it to a parcel of land, get the score and then use the score in the marketplace,” she said.

“You could contract your management of that parcel to either keep your high score or improve it,” she said.

“Our project is fine tuning that index. We’re doing a market analysis and a cross jurisdictional scan of what metrics and measurables are already being used,” she said.

Next summer, the WSGA will be field testing the new index on ranches of stock grower members to make sure it works. WSGA is working with Solstice Environmental Management, and Green Analytics, both of which are based in Edmonton. These companies have started doing a scan of all market analysis in North America and Australia.

Field testing for the project will take place on 50,000 acres in Alberta.

Jeffrey said PCBFA has three projects funded by the RSP.

The projects include a silvopasture project, a liming project, and a perennials project.

“All three of them are three-year projects that started in 2024, so they’re in their second field season right now,” said Jeffrey.

The silvopasture project is a producer-led study that evaluates the potential benefits of grazing forest systems versus open pasture.

“That kind of intentional combination of trees, forage and livestock managed as a single integrated practice is what’s called a silvopastural system, and they have potential to provide a number of benefits to livestock and to the plant community,” she said.

Some of the benefits include increasing soil fertility and conservation, improving wildlife habitat and the quality of forage, and diversifying income. There are also some ecosystems benefits like atmospheric carbon sequestration and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

“On top of that, trees and shrubs in these systems provide shade for animals, so that’s going to improve thermal comfort, which then improves the ability of animals to consume and digest adequate forage biomass, especially in hot weather conditions,” said Jeffrey. This research is being conducted on a ranch in High Prairie, in Big Lakes County.

The second project is a liming project, which is being run as a field study on a producer’s farm in Sexsmith. Adding lime to forages can increase soil pH, which is the primary outcome of the project.

For that project, agricultural lime, pelletized lime and wood ash (an industry by-product from a mill), are being tested to measure the impacts of PH on farm income and profitability.

“It’s assessing the economic feasibility and measuring the impact of liming over the three-year period, and the goals to design liming guidelines and management strategies, particularly for forage systems,” said Jeffrey. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to provide clear recommendations for producers. We’re seeing that soil acidity is a growing concern,” she said.

“When soils are strongly acidic, so 5.5 and under, the availability of many macronutrients for forages decreases and some elements will increase to toxic levels as well. So that’s a concern,” she said.

The Peace country, which contains the boreal forest, has a low pH and more acidic soils, so lime can increase the pH.

The third project is called the Longevity and Ecosystem Services of Perennial Forage Mixes.

Small plots were seeded in 2020, but the project will be monitored again between 2024 and 2026.

“We’re continuing to monitor the biomass production and feed quality of the forage itself, as well as water use efficiency and some soil health parameters,” she said.

A former PhD student who is now a staff member started this project to test water use efficiency, said Jeffrey.

“It’s been interesting because we have had some severe drought years in the time we’ve had these plots. We had our field day last week, and they had harvested these plots about two weeks before the field day and took their cut off them,” she said.

The project has highlighted the value of legumes in drought conditions.

“In the two very dry weeks since the plots were harvested, the only thing that has come back is legumes. None of the grasses have and the legumes look great, like they’re green, they’re up, they look fantastic,” she said.

The plots have been seeded with monoculture grasses, and everything in between, all the way up to monoculture legumes.

“We saw how strong of an impact those legumes had on the water use efficiency of the forage, and their ability to continue producing decent quality and decent quantity of forage in drought conditions,” said Jeffrey.

The project is now in its fifth year.

“We’re at the point where we are looking at how long can these plots continue producing a forage stand that’s worthwhile,” she said.

Jeffrey said there were other benefits to participating in the RSP.

“On the silvopasture project, we were able to get the rangeland specialists to come out to the site and do some of the data collection analysis with us. They looked at identifying all the species that were present and determined the proportion of the species that were there,” she said. “That was really cool.”

Jeffrey said the RSP is a great program, and she would encourage people to consider applying for it.

Applications for the program are now open for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. Applicants will be considered based on their knowledge and understanding of rangeland management. Applications are open until Sept. 17, 2025.

More information on the program and how to apply is available online.

The post Alberta invests $1.3 million in rangeland research appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“As you near the Old Man River, there’s a grassy basin, and it’s part of a grazing co-op owned by a group of ranchers called the Waldron Grazing Co-operative,” said Larry Simpson, senior advisor to the Alberta region of the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

In 1999, the Bob Creek Wildland Park was created thanks to British Petroleum, a company which donated 2,900 acres of its mineral interests to the Nature Conservancy of Canada to create the park. The park was about 70,000 acres.

In 2013, the Nature Conservancy of Canada entered into an agreement with the Waldron Grazing Co-operative to preserve the 13,000-acre Waldron Ranch.

Simpson said the piece of land at that time was the largest conservation easement in Canadian history. The Waldron Grazing Co-operative, possibly the largest grazing co-op in North America, used some of the money paid to them by the Nature Conservancy of Canada to buy the King Ranch.

“The last piece is the Bob Creek Ranch,” said Simpson. The ranch connects with miles of riverfront on the Old Man River and is bordered on two sides by the Bob Creek Wildland Park. The ranch is more than 2,400 acres.

The first phase of the project is done, and the groups are moving on to the second phase.

Conserving it will create a continuous land block of over 100,000 acres of conserved and protected lands within the headwaters of the South Saskatchewan watershed.

“When you put them all together, it creates connectivity between the Rocky Mountains and a forest reserve called the Porcupine Hills Forest Reserve. It creates 20 miles of connectivity in between two big blocks of land that are frequented by all kinds of wildlife and all kinds of people,” said Simpson.

When the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Waldron Grazing Co-operative put a conservation easement on the land, it does not mean that the Nature Conservancy of Canada owns it.

“It means they (the Waldron Grazing Co-op) still own it, but they have agreed to register restrictions on the title of their land, that they won’t subdivide the land, they won’t cultivate it, but they will still own it,” said Simpson.

The land can still be used for grazing and sold if future owners do not subdivide it or break it up in any way.

The Bob Creek Ranch was purchased by the Waldron Grazing Co-operative about two and a half years ago.

“We are looking to preserve this land so it can’t be developed. It can stay in the state that we’ve acquired it in, and it will be forever undeveloped and uncultivated and grazing cattle,” said Kim Wachtler, a member of the board of directors of the Waldron Grazing Co-operative and a fourth-generation rancher at Burke Creek Ranch.

“It’s important for people to know that we’re using cattle to keep these landscapes intact,” said Wachtler.

Negotiations to acquire the first piece of the Bob Creek Ranch began in 2021, and the land was acquired in 2022, said Wachtler. The Waldron Grazing Co-operative entered negotiations immediately with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

“It took a while for them to get their funds together and go through terms to be worked out,” said Wachtler.

The conservation easement on the Bob Creek Ranch has been done in two phases. The first part of the conservation easement on the Bob Creek Ranch was finalized in May 2025. Wachtler said the second phase has acreages that are a bit different and there is more waterfront on the second piece.

The Waldron Grazing Co-operative was created in 1962 and took over a private ranch at that time. Since then, the co-operative has brought little pieces of land and attached them onto the ranch. There are currently 80 ranching families involved with the co-operative.

“As the shareholders, we find a lot more economies of scale. We can do things as a group that we couldn’t do as individual ranchers,” said Wachtler.

Both Simpson and Wachtler agree the Bob Creek Ranch is a unique area that can also be used for hiking, as well as grazing.

Wachtler said the area is very diverse and contains ecologically sensitive grasslands. Many species of risk pass through the land, including black bears, grizzly bears, moose and large herds of elk.

“There are different species at risk that they’re seeing out there right now. Some of these are things that you wouldn’t be so aware of, like leopard salamanders and different kinds of bats,” said Watchler. MULTISAR, an organization that collaborates with partners throughout Alberta to work towards conserving species at risk in the province, is currently doing a study on the land.

“They’re out there right now, assessing the range health and doing a wildlife species count and looking at the riparian areas,” she said.

Simpson said the area has an interesting mix of wildlife that you would find on the Prairies as well as the Rocky Mountains.

“Part of the Bob Creek Ranch is part of the Bob Creek Wildland Park, and it’s the largest block of uneroded montane. It’s not mountain, it’s just in between,” said Simpson.

There are big ridges, with partial forest with lots of open spaces.

Simpson said the area was Napi’s playground. Napi is a trickster figure in Blackfoot culture.

The Nature Conservancy of Canda is seeking support to help fund the second phase of the conservation easement and complete the Bob Creek Ranch project. When the second section of the Bob Creek Ranch is preserved, three quarters of a section will be added to the conservation easement.

“That’s going to happen here, this fall,” said Simpson.

“And so we need to raise $100,000 for that as well.”

The post Saving southern Alberta’s Bob Creek Ranch appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Alberta Forestry, Parks and Tourism has fast-tracked its processes to allow grazing lease, licence and permit holders to more quickly accept wildfire-displaced livestock on their land. The main condition is that key information be reported in short order.

“This is a temporary change just for this year because we have so much livestock and so many grazing leases from up north that are burnt out,” said Lindsye Murfin, manager of the Alberta Grazing Leaseholders Association.

“So we need to find alternate feed and alternate places for these livestock to go until they can get back onto the land they are normally grazed on. If leaseholders can easily open up their lease land and give cattle places to go, it’s going to be better for everybody.”

Participating grazing disposition holders must remain responsible for stewardship of the disposition and ensure rangeland health is maintained. They also must report additional livestock and any measures taken with supplemental feeding to their local rangeland agrologist within seven calendar days.

Finally, the use of the disposition by other livestock must be reported on the holder’s stock return.

Under normal circumstances, a grazing disposition holder hoping to put another producer’s livestock on their lease would need permission from the provincial government, typically by way of a rangeland agrologist who serves as contact between the leaseholder and the government.

That rule still applies in situations where cattle haven’t been displaced by wildfire, said Murfin.

The rules around supplemental feeding on grazing dispositions are primarily intended to protect local ecosystems from noxious weeds and other invasives in feed, she said.

READ MORE: Air quality deteriorates as wildfires rage in Western Canada

“Normally, you have to get it OK’d with the rangeland agrologist but right now, because we’re in an emergency and trying to find feed for these animals that are being displaced, they’re just saying go ahead and do this and follow up with your agrologist afterwards.

“They’ll have to follow up with the control of weed species or any sort of clean-up or buffers.” 

Although these changes are a call-out to the charity of disposition holders, accepting new animals can be risky, especially in an environment still recovering from the drought of 2021, said Murfin.

“Adding more animals, especially at this time of year, can negatively impact forage production down the road and overall stewardship of the rangelands,” she said in a follow-up email.

“A lot of Alberta is still in recovery from drought so the decision process when adding more animals to a certain land base has to take that into effect.”

In many cases the forage capacity simply isn’t there.

“There are many leaseholders who would take on more animals but they simply don’t have the pasture forage production to feed them. The decision all comes down to ‘do I have forage to feed extra cows and my own cows?’ and in a lot of areas the answer is no.”

Producers with displaced cattle have other options as well. Alberta Forestry is accepting applications for temporary grazing on vacant public lands. More information is available at 310-LAND (5263).

“In the interim, the best options to hold and feed livestock are rodeo grounds, exhibition grounds and auction markets which have the needed infrastructure,” said Alberta Forestry in a news release.

READ MORE: Canada on track for worst-ever wildfire season

The ministry reported that many areas of the province had sub-optimal grazing conditions even before the wildfires.

“Central and northwestern Alberta and localized parts of the province are experiencing dry conditions, resulting in slower than usual green-up of grazing lands for livestock,” it said.

“The situation was further exacerbated in the first week of May 2023 when an extremely large number of out-of-control wildfires and wind events resulted in numerous evacuations and expansive areas of private and Crown land being burned.”

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