Grassland voices

the Western Meadowlark, one of the many songbirds that thrive on community
pastures--(image courtesy of Hamilton Greenwood)

On Saturday afternoon I am joining Ed Rodger, volunteer caretaker for the Govenlock-Nashlyn-Battle Creek Grasslands Important Bird Area in Saskatchewan's southwest corner, to sample breeding bird populations for the Saskatchewan Breeding Bird Atlas project.

We will head out each morning in time for the dawn chorus of bird song and record every bird we hear or see. (Information on the Breeding Bird Atlas here.)

The IBA is composed of three of the most ecologically significant community pastures in the federal community pasture program, which are all in their final year of operation as pastures managed by Agriculture and Agri-food Canada. Nashyln and Battle Creek are scheduled to be transitioned to private management by the grazing patrons but it remains to be seen what will happen to Govenlock, which, for now, remains federal land. Grassland conservation groups are waiting for the federal government to work out an agreement with the private cattle producers dependent on Govenlock--one that would ensure their grazing rights on acceptable terms while providing support and programming for biodiversity and species at risk conservation.

The vast stretch of native grassland enclosed by these three contiguous pastures (nearly 850 sq kms of land (330 sq. mi.)) hosts some of the greatest densities of species at risk on the northern Great Plains. At this time of year, the air above these lands is filled with the song of thousands of birds--grassland longspurs and sparrows, lark buntings, meadowlarks and pipits. Here are a few of them in living colour and full voice, courtesy of the video work of Wildbird Video Productions and others on Youtube.

First, the Chestnut-collared Longspur:

It's cousin of the short-grass, the McCown's Longpur, (Wild Bird Video):

The Baird's sparrow (courtesy of Birdchick):

Brewer's sparrow (Wild Bird Video), voice of the sage-brush country:

Its much rarer neighbour the Sage Thrasher (Wild Bird Video):

the Lark Bunting, with one of the most distinctive voices on the prairie (courtesy of VHS Ark):

everyone's prairie favourite, the Western Meadowlark (Wild Bird Video):

and finally, the song that falls from the skies, the Sprague's Pipit, which as this video illustrates, is one of the hardest birds to get a good look at (courtesy of Charlotte Wasylik):

Grassland protection and loss--by the numbers

[Thanks to Katherine Arbuthnott of Public Pastures--Public Interest for gathering the data and research for many of the figures shown below.]

• We estimate that we have somewhere around 20% of our native prairie remaining but it is a very rough estimate based on old and inadequate data. (See this document by the Prairie Conservation Action Plan.) According to the most recent estimates which are all based on research from the 1994 Southern Digital Land Cover (SDLC) Digital Data--Saskatchewan has lost more than 80% of its native grasslands to cultivation and urban development. We should have a more up to date and accurate figure, but the province has never done a proper inventory of its native land cover south of the boreal forest.
  
• Per cent of grassland remaining by eco-region: 13% in aspen parkland, 16% in moist mixed grassland, and 31% in mixed grassland. (From Hammermeister, A., Gauthier, D., & McGovern, K. (2001). Saskatchewan’s native prairie: Taking stock of a vanishing ecosystem and dwindling resource. Native Plant Society of SK report. And Statistics Canada census of agriculture, 2006; access here.)
  
• Between 1971 and 1986, approximately 25% of grasslands were lost to agriculture, industry, and urban development.
  ( From Coupland, R.T. (1987). Endangered prairie habitats: the mixed prairie. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Endangered Species in the Prairie Provinces, Edmonton, AB, 24-26 January, 1986. )
  
• Between 1987 and 2001, an additional 10% was lost across all eco-regions: 15% in aspen parkland, 8% in mixed grasslands, and 5% in Cyprus uplands. This means that approximately 1% of the small areas of native grasslands remaining are lost each year. (From Watmough, M.D., & Schmoll, M.J. (2007). Environment Canada’s prairie and northern region habitat monitoring program, Phase II. Technical report series No. 493. Environment Canada, Canadian Wildlife Service, Edmonton, AB.)

• 85% of the land south of our forest is privately owned.
  ("Game Management Plan: 2017-2027", Government of Saskatchewan).
  
• Saskatchewan has 24% of all private land in Canada, but merely 6.5% of the nation's total area ("Land Use in Saskatchewan," P.C.. Rump and Kent Harper, Govt of Sask, 1980). In Saskatchewan most habitat loss is driven by industrialized agriculture on privately owned land.
  
• Some areas of Saskatchewan have among the highest rates of grassland habitat loss in the entire Great Plains.
  (World Wildlife Fund Plowprint Report, 2016.). 

• The transfer of the former federal community pastures has effectively removed all conservation programming and protection from 1.78 M acres of land, which are all listed under Saskatchewan's Representative Areas Network as officially protected. . . at least for now.
  
• The Province of Saskatchewan has removed another 1.8 M acres of public land in the grassland eco-zone from the Wildlife Habitat Protection Act to make it available for sale--effectively removing its legislative protection.
  
• In its March Budget the Province announced that it is shutting down the Provincial Community Pasture program (another 780,000 acres, 590,000 acres of which have also been listed under Saskatchewan's Representative Areas Network as officially protected).
  
  
• It remains to be seen whether some of these grasslands will be subdivided and sold, but if they are no longer receiving any form of government management or programming and will be treated more or less like any other privately leased Crown grasslands, their status as protected areas will eventually be lost.
  
• This brings the tally of acres losing conservation programming and protection in Saskatchewan to more than 2.3 Million. That puts at risk more than one-third of the 6 Million acres in Saskatchewan's prairie ecozone officially protected under our (much neglected) Representative Areas Network.
  

A farmer's "next challenge"?

Yes, listen up farmers—if you need advice you can always get it from a mining company’s billboards.

Because mining companies always serve the public good and treat the land really well. PotashCorp really cares about the starving multitudes all over the planet. And it cares about our prairie farmers who have to shoulder the responsibility of feeding the world—guys like the model in the new PotashCorp ads photoshopped in to make it look like he is outstanding in his field.

I bet they care so much they are even working on a program to help our farmers take up the next challenge after they feed 9 billion with unsustainable, petro-intensive, climate-change-driving high-yield agriculture. And that would be helping them come up with a way to explain to their grandchildren (and themselves) just why it was a good idea to remove every shred of natural cover on miles and miles of the land they manage. But that shouldn’t too difficult—you can always appeal to an authority like God or global trade, something like that:

“Well you see, theoretical grandchild, the Good Lord made this land very fertile—good for growing the wheat and canola that starving children eat all over the planet. We’ve been doing it here for almost 100 years. Your great-granddad was the first person to grow wheat in this part of Saskatchewan.” 

“Really? What was here before that?” 

“Oh, not much really. Just a bunch of grass. It maybe fed some buffalo and a few nomadic Indians who came by now and then but they are better off with the real food they have now. Your grandpa used to have a bit of that old grass where the school used to be but we crop that spot now. It’d be irresponsible to keep a piece of land in grass when it could be productive and feed people.” 

“Why are we feeding people who live so far away? Can’t they feed themselves?” 

“Well, that is a good question. Let’s see if I can remember my Econ. 101. Ok, here we have the know-how to use machines and chemicals and thousands of acres to grow a whole lot of food without having to employ many people. And we do that better than anyone on the planet. That is what economists call our ‘comparative advantage’. People who buy our grain and canola in other parts of the world might not be so good at feeding themselves but they have their own things they’re good at—things like, oh I don’t know, digging conflict minerals out of the ground to provide the rare metals Chinese people need to make your smartphone work...that kind of thing. It all works out quite nicely.”

“Yeah, but grandpa....” 

“Now you run along and play . . . grandpa has to go stand in the field and think about how he is going to feed 9 billion people.”

And now, it might be a good idea to clear the palate with some food for thought from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (click on the image below to see a larger version):