The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) has entered into another landmark conservation agreement with the Waldron Grazing Co-op to protect historic Bob Creek Ranch along Highway 22, also known as the Cowboy Trail.
The 2,400-acre ranch borders a section of the Oldman River and includes native fescue grasslands, wetlands and stands of deciduous and conifer forest.
Black bears, grizzlies, moose, and herds of elk are frequent visitors to this beautiful landscape.
The ranch is surrounded on three sides by the Bob Creek Wildland Park, a 70,000-acre park created in 1999 thanks to a land donation from British Petroleum.
“From a conservation perspective this is very significant. It’s part of the last one percent of the Northern Plains region that’s big enough and wild enough to have bears and wolves and cougars,” said Larry Simpson, a senior manager for the NCC, in an interview with TheRockies.Life.
The Great Northern Plains is a vast area east of the Rockies that stretches from central Alberta to Texas.
Cowboy and singer-songwriter Ian Tyson said of the agreement, “Preserving large chunks of range lands such as the Waldron ranch on Alberta’s eastern slopes is a very good thing. Good for the elk, bear, deer and all the wildlife that shares the fescue grasslands. Good for the rivers and streams that filter and bring our clean water. Good for the beef cattle that begin their lives in an open range environment. Good for the urban folks that drive Hwy. 22 to give their kids a glimpse of our last golden west. Good for my soul.“
Vanishing grassland
Humans are converting the Canadian portion of these once-wilderness prairies to cropland and other uses at a rate of roughly 150,000 acres per year, an area the size of Calgary.
Every year, opportunities for protecting large chunks of native grassland get fewer and farther between.
That’s what makes the partnership with the Waldron Grazing Co-op important, according to Simpson.
Buying property outright is expensive and often cost prohibitive. As an alternative, the NCC often raises money to compensate landowners for agreeing not to develop the land and maintain it in a natural state.
Conservation easements, as these agreements are called, are attached to the property title. Even if the land is sold, the conservation requirements remain legally-binding.
This is the approach that the NCC took with the Waldron Co-op, enabling members to continue running their ranches and grazing their cattle.
It’s a win-win for wild grassland ecosystems and sustainable agriculture.
“When you drive down Highway 22, it looks like the world’s a good place and everything’s intact and that there’s no urgency but there is urgency. The majority of what was once natural grasslands in the Canadian prairies is the equivalent of an ecological clearcut,” said Simpson.
Three of a kind
The Bob Creek Ranch agreement is the third grassland conservation win for this partnership.
“We had been chatting with the Waldron board as early as maybe 2002 because it was one of the largest and most significant blocks of privately owned grasslands remaining in the eastern slopes of Alberta,” Simspon said. “It took a while, but we circled back again in about 2010 and just said, ‘You know, we have something that might be worth contemplating and we’d like to make you an offer. Would you like to see what we’re thinking?’ And they said yes.”
This was the start of a fruitful relationship.
In 2013, the NCC inked an agreement to protect the 13,000-acre Waldron Ranch.
The following year, the co-op invested $11.25 million of the money that the NCC paid for the Waldron Ranche conservation easement to buy the 4000-acre King Ranch.
This ranch was owned and operated by the legendary bachelor brothers Harrold and Maurice King until they both passed away in the 1990s.
With the Bob Creek Ranch conservation easement nearly completed, more than 100,000 acres of continuous grassland ecosystem are now protected in the South Saskatchewan River headwaters on the eastern slopes.
“Bob Creek Ranch was like the hole in the donut,” Simpson said.
Grassland stewards and ranchers
The Waldron Grazing Co-op started in 1962 and now has dozens of shareholders.
John Smith, of Plateau Cattle Company near Nanton, is a third generation rancher and a Waldron Co-op board member. His grandfather was one of the founding shareholders.
Every June, Smith and his ranch hands drive more than 400 head of cattle to summer pastures in the rolling hills and forests of Bob Creek Ranch.
He said the vast majority of co-op members are “on board” with the NCC conservation easement strategy and that the Bob Creek Ranch property is a welcome addition.
“The easement basically says no turning of sod and cultivation, no development and no subdivisions. That’s what the co-op wants, to keep the land in a more or less natural state for future generations,” Smith told TheRockies.Life.
According to Smith, earlier conservation easements had nitpicky requirements around maximum fence heights and other standards that made the agreements unnecessarily complicated.
“The NCC has made it a lot simpler to agree to be good stewards of the land,” Smith said. “To be honest, that’s what we are already doing as ranchers.”
