The agreement gives both organizations conservation easements on the property in perpetuity to prevent it from future development, crop planting, or even wind and solar farms
An agreement to protect a sprawling ranch in southern Alberta from development is the largest of its kind in the country, the Nature Conservancy of Canada says, and will allow the family that owns it to continue raising cattle there.
“We’ve just maintained the legacy of sustainable ranching that the McIntyres began when they came up from Texas and saw the overgrazing that had occurred through the Midwest, and so they learned through others’ mistakes and left the grass rather than taking it all,” Ralph Thrall III said Sunday in a phone interview from Lethbridge.
The Nature Conservancy says McIntyre Ranch contains some of Canada’s most significant uninterrupted blocks of rough fescue grasslands and over 1,000 hectares of wetlands which it says support an abundance of wildlife. It also provides carbon storage and water filtration. The Conservancy says keeping the land sustainably grazed by cattle is important because their grazing behaviour approximates the historic actions of bison.
The Nature Conservancy says hundreds of donors made the agreement possible. It says contributions also came from the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Land Trust Grant Program, as well as from the federal government through the Natural Heritage Conservation Program.Thrall himself wasn’t always interested in ranching. At one point in younger days, he spent a year as a professional golfer. But he says he and his siblings grew up understanding the family’s ranch was unique.
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