Supporting native grasslands in Canada: Lessons learned and future management of the Prairie Pastures Conservation Area (PPCA) in Saskatchewan

Abstract

Globally, grassland ecosystems are extremely endangered with few significant parcels remaining and are critical to conserving native species at risk. • The Prairie Pastures Conservation Area in southern Saskatchewan has some of the largest remaining blocks of native grasslands under Canadian federal control. • This area should be managed to enhance Indigenous collaboration, establish a conservation network, and increase public access to native grassland ecosystems.Temperate grasslands are the most endangered and least protected biome in the world. Few significant parcels remain and strategies for ongoing protection are critical for conservation efforts worldwide. In southwestern Saskatchewan, three contiguous blocks of native grassland, known as the Prairie Pastures Conservation Area, are federally managed by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Previously, the 800-km 2 space was managed by the Department of Agriculture as public rangeland in the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency (PFRA). We interviewed 11 individuals, including NGO representatives and pasture patrons, familiar with the PFRA at a native prairie/grassland conference to enhance our understanding of the importance of the agency and the lands in the province to them, as well as to Canada and globally. Themes that emerged included benefits of historic PFRA management, reservations about privatization of pasturelands, and worries about mismanagement. We take these themes and build them into our recommendations for what Environment and Climate Change Canada should do with the Prairie Pastures Conservation Area going forward: enhance Indigenous collaboration, establish a conservation network, and increase public use and awareness.

Experiments with a Dark Pedagogy: Learning from/through Temporality, Climate Change and Species Extinction (…and Ghosts)

“…As a result of colonial land practices over the past 400 years that have removed Indigenous peoples, built levees and dams, clear cut forests and converted diverse prairie grasslands to agricultural crops and flood plain monocultures (Mueller et al, 2021), prairie landscapes continue to be one of the most threatened and endangered ecosystems in the world (Hisey et al, 2022;Samson et al, 2004). Due to growing public concern for the scarcity of resources during periods of rapid depletion in the industrialisation era, a conservation ethic has existed in Canada since the beginning of the twentieth century.…”