Saskatchewan Community Pastures video
Here is a short video that I prepared for the Public Pastures – Public Interest group, a citizen-based organization devoted to maintaining Saskatchewan’s public grasslands as healthy prairie ecosystems and working landscapes. The idea was to raise awareness about the plight of former PFRA community pastures that will no longer be manged through the 70-year old Community Pasture Program, and transferred from federal control to the prairie provinces. The Saskatchewan government is not interested in managing these large tracts of native prairie and plans to sell or lase the...
Read MoreMargaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson visit PFRA Community Pastures
Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, two of Canada’s most acclaimed writers and lifelong conservationists will be in Saskatchewan from June 24 to 28, 2013 for the Prairie Passages Tour. The two writers are Joint Honorary Presidents of BirdLife International’s Rare Bird Club. During the tour, Atwood and Gibson will visit PFRA community pastures and Grasslands National Park. The purpose of this tour is to raise public awareness of the national and international significance of the PFRA heritage rangelands for plant and animals that live on them – natural prairie and the 32 species at...
Read MoreGrasslands National Park after the 2013 wildfire
The Grasslands National Park photo tour went well. The weather was relatively cooperative and we managed to capture a few great images. I will post a few samples later this week. Prairie in the Park is recovering very fast after the massive wildfire that swept through the Park in April of this year. Early May was drier than normal, but heavy rains arrived at the end of the month. Temperatures were below average and rainfall was well above average over the first two weeks of June; many areas of Saskatchewan have received more than 150% of normal amount of rain. This might explain why the...
Read MoreMichelle’s Prize – award for conservation work
I am honoured to announce that I have been awarded the Michelle’s Prize by the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA). This scholarship is awarded through the University of Saskatchewan to a student pursuing graduate degree at the School of Environment and Sustainability or in the Juris Doctor program at the College of Law. The Michelle’s Prize scholarship was established to mark CELA’s 40th anniversary of legal, community and social activism directed towards protecting our environment, and to honour the life work of Michelle Swenarchuk, lawyer, environmental activist and former...
Read MoreA vision for the future of PFRA community pastures
Earlier this year I wrote a post about the largest land transfer in to occur in the recent Canadian history, affecting management of 9,290 square kilometres of native prairie (see the article titled “What is the future for PFRA community pastures?”). In a nutshell, the Canadian government decided that it does not want to look after some of the largest un-fragmented tracts of grasslands found anywhere in the world, and told the three prairie provinces that they can do whatever they want with the land that used to be under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (rather...
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