{"id":147,"date":"2018-07-24T21:50:13","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T21:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prairiecommons.ca\/?page_id=147"},"modified":"2018-10-04T20:13:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T20:13:16","slug":"prairie-protectors","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.prairiecommons.ca\/?page_id=147","title":{"rendered":"Prairie protectors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
\n
\n\t

Grasslands can help fight climate change. This farm couple hopes it\u2019s not too late.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Story and photos by Katie Doke Sawatzky <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published Oct 1, 2018 3:30 PM<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cedar chips spill from the walls of Kristen Martin\u2019s and Jared Clarke\u2019s newly bought bungalow. Family and friends are busy prying off wooden siding flecked with peeling paint. The home\u2019s only insulation, the chips had been packed between the two-by-fours and, after 60 years, had settled to the bottom of the frame. Scattered on the ground, they join glass windowpanes that have tumbled into the grass after a simple push from the inside. The doors, windows and siding are all being replaced to make their new home livable in the winter. The wallpaper and green carpet that covers the floors, even the bathroom, will come out later.<\/p>\n

For $171,000, Martin and Clarke bought 160 acres of land just northwest of Edenwold, Saskatchewan. The 115 acres of wheat and canola waving in the wind would soon be harvested, the soil hosting their roots for one final winter. Come spring, the crops, which have been a mainstay since German-speaking immigrants settled the area in the 1880s, would be reseeded with the help of the neighbours, many of whom had been farming those grains for decades. But Martin and Clarke wanted them gone. They had moved here, 40 kilometres northeast of their hometown, Regina, for one reason: to nurture what many have forgotten and few value. It was time to return the land to grass.<\/p>\n

While \u201cprairie\u201d is an official descriptor for the province of Saskatchewan (used by the Canadian Encyclopedia, for example), it is, in fact, a complete misnomer. Eighty per cent of native prairie in the province, a landscape denoted by grassland and aspen parkland, is gone. The remainder exists in large federal pastures and Grasslands National Park in the province\u2019s southwest corner, or in tiny islands dotting the bottom third of the province, where smaller pastures and marginal areas between fences and roads have escaped cultivation. The majority of the habitat loss happened in the early 1900s, when the province\u2019s population and cropland dramatically increased. Between 1906 and 1916, in the southwest corner alone, the number of people quadrupled and cropland increased ninefold. The majority of prairie residents living now wouldn\u2019t remember a time when yellow fields of canola didn\u2019t outnumber wheatgrass and golden gaillardia, plants that have blown in the wind each summer for millennia.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pattern across the world. According to the International Union for Conservation Network, temperate grasslands are the most endangered and least protected ecosystem on the planet. Five per cent of the Northern Great Plains are located in the Canada\u2019s prairie provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, totalling 16 per cent of the provinces\u2019 land area. Five per cent of a country doesn\u2019t sound like much, but in Canada it means 114 million acres and, in Saskatchewan alone, 60 million acres. And of that five per cent of native prairie, only 3.5 per cent is protected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>