Farewell, Saskatchewan Native Grasslands . . .

Farewell, Saskatchewan Native Grasslands . . .

Postby Oscar » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:09 am

Privatized Crown grassland being ploughed up this week

[ http://www.swbooster.com/Opinion/2013-0 ... his-week/1]

Published on September 5, 2013 Topics : Saskatchewan

By Trevor Herriot [ http://trevorherriot.blogspot.ca/ ]

Long before the PFRA pastures issue arose, the Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture had already begun looking for ways to sell off Crown lands, including native grasslands. In 2009 they began trying to sell the Wildlife Habitat Protection Act lands (WHPA) by seeing if they could justify removing their designation as wildlife habitat.

Conservationists spoke out against the privatization and WHPA lands are still in limbo today. Meanwhile, Sask Ag. has begun selling non-WHPA Crown land, including some native grassland that supports species at risk. Many of these properties are as valuable ecologically as WHPA lands but simply were not designated. Because they were not WHPA lands the sales happened without any conservation easements to prevent the new owner from ploughing the ancient prairie.

Well, the inevitable is starting to happen. Yesterday (Aug. 30) I received news that an Alberta farmer who purchased a large block of Crown land in the far Southwest has a hired man running a 24 foot breaking plough through the sod, destroying the habitat once and for all. The land in question adjoins the west flank of the Govenlock PFRA pasture and therefore supports its ecological integrity as a single block of intact native grass.

As I write this, the destruction continues and there is nothing any of us can do to stop it. The rumour is the Alberta man bought the land from a Saskatchewan resident who had originally purchased it and then flipped it for a profit--not sure if that is true.

This is why Public Pastures--Public Interest and prairie conservationists in general believe that the best way to protect our largest pieces of Crown grassland is to keep them under the Crown. Easements or no easements, once they are sold to a rancher the land can be re-sold to someone who wants to plough it and plant crops or destroy it in other ways for profit.

- - - SNIP - - -

This province is long overdue for a thorough public review of all of our Crown native grasslands--co-op pastures, Provincial and Federal community pastures, and the seven million acres of Crown grassland leased to private cattlemen. First, to find out what we have remaining, and then to determine its ecological value (biodiversity, carbon sequestration, soil and water conservation), its heritage resources (Metis and First Nations' ancestral sites), and its food security values, and then to decide in a full consultation with all stakeholders, how we want these incredibly valuable and endangered landscapes to be managed for the good of all and generations to come.

PHOTO: http://trevorherriot.blogspot.ca/
Last edited by Oscar on Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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YEATS: . . . the centre cannot hold

Postby Oscar » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:13 am

The Second Coming - WB Yeats, 1865-1939

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

URL: http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/780/
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Stewart: Community pasture transition to provincial control

Postby Oscar » Sat Jan 04, 2014 12:09 pm

Stewart: Community pasture transition to provincial control on track

[ http://pfrapastureposts.wordpress.com/2 ... -on-track/ ]

by nbeingessner January 03, 2014

In the last post, concerns about pasture transitions were raised. Minister of Agriculture Lyle Stewart assures Western Producer readers that the transitions are on schedule in this article. [ http://www.producer.com/2014/01/communi ... -on-track/ ]

““The Dec. 1 date for signing is not set in stone,” he said in response to a news release from the Community Pasture Patrons Association of Saskatchewan (CPPAS), which said the deadline had come and gone without formal agreements.

Rather, he said it was a target to en-sure patrons were working toward developing their plans and that the first 10 were ready to go for 2014.
”

…”However, there are a couple of outstanding issues.

One is the matter of non-reversionary land, which is land in some of the pastures, including several of the first 10, that does not automatically revert to the province. It represents five percent of the federal land and is owned by the agriculture, environment and defence departments.

Stewart said an agreement between Ottawa and Regina to swap land to accommodate the non-reversionary land fell through after other departments stepped in and said a formal process had to be followed.
”
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Protected grassland faces uncertain future

Postby Oscar » Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:45 am

Protected grassland faces uncertain future

[ http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/ ... story.html ]

By Andrea Hill, Postmedia News January 29, 2014

OTTAWA — More than two million acres of protected Canadian grassland could be compromised as the federal government starts withdrawing from a decades-old prairie rehabilitation program this year, naturalists and academics say.

The Community Pastures Program — which saw federal dollars flow into the management of 85 fields in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta since the 1930s — was scrapped in the 2012 omnibus budget.

The federal government is now gradually turning management of the fields over to Manitoba and Saskatchewan, who already own 90 per cent of the land used for the program. But critics worry the provinces lack the resources to provide the same degree of environmental stewardship as the federal government.

Saskatchewan naturalist Trevor Herriot said the move indicates the government has “more or less abandoned its entire commitment to grassland conservation.”

“This is the oldest and largest, best pieces of native grassland we’ve got in Canada and some of the best chunks in North America,” he said. “(The Community Pastures Program) was really the gold standard in Canada for prairie conservation and that system’s being lost.”

Management of 10 fields was transferred to Manitoba and Saskatchewan in December 2013 and another 10 will be transferred this March. By 2018, all pastures will be under provincial management. One pasture in Alberta will close this year.

The Department of Agriculture did not respond to questions about how much the transfers would save the government.

Under the Community Pastures Program, which was started after the Great Depression to revive drought-ravaged land, about 2,500 farmers pay a small fee to deliver cows and calves to the fields each spring. Federally paid field managers — cowboys — take care of the animals and herd them to ensure optimum grazing.

“They would use the cows basically as engineers to re-engineer the range,” explained Joe Schmutz, professor of environment and sustainability at University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

The field managers — some of whom may disappear without federal dollars — are also responsible for other conservation duties, including controlling invasive species.

In Saskatchewan, where the majority of community pastures are located, fields will be leased to the farmers who use them. The farmers, who will be facing higher fees to graze their cattle because of lost federal subsidies, must decide whether they can afford to hire mangers.

“Largely, it’s going to be very, very difficult under patron governance to replicate the environmental stewardship,” said Ian McCreary, chair of the Community Pasture Patrons Association of Saskatchewan, which represents the users of most of the province’s community pastures.

He said increased fees and management responsibility could cause some fields to fail altogether and that farmers in fields that survive may try to take on the manager’s role themselves to save money.

MORE:

[ http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/ ... story.html ]
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