Sparing grassland from the plow — and from housing developments

A southern Alberta organization is having success with conservation agreements to keep the environment and cattle ranching intact.

“The easement is very pro-grazing and ranching,” said Justin Thompson, executive director of the Southern Alberta Land Trust Society (SALTS).

“There’s not a lot of restrictions around the actual operation. What we want to avoid is those types of activities on the landscape that would fundamentally change the land use, things like the cultivation of native grasslands.”

SALTS was started by southern Alberta ranchers and landowners, and ranchers have always served on the board of the organization, which started 25 years ago when the federal government opened the opportunity for conservation easements.

Groups such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada were already active, but a group of southern Alberta landowners felt they were the best ones to make decisions about land use.

“The philosophy behind that is that those folks that are working in the industry have the best understanding of the stewardship ethic and opportunities, and the work that the ranchers are doing on the land, but also the challenges that ranchers are going through,” said Thompson.

SALTS has more than 60 conservation easements from west of Calgary down to Waterton Lakes National Park. They cover about 40,000 acres of prime native grassland, foothills and riparian areas.

“In recent years, SALTS has been doing anywhere between 2,000 to 5,000 acres of conservation easements per year. That can be three or four landowners a year. We’ve done easements on up to six different properties a year,” said Thompson.

The easements are an important ecological tool enabled by provincial legislation under the Land Stewardship Act in Alberta. There are similar agreements across Canada. They restrict fragmentation and development.

“The goal is to maintain the watershed, maintain the habitat but also try and maintain scale for agriculture. One of the goals is to keep the big properties intact, so those big properties don’t get carved into smaller and smaller properties, which then — as we know — that landscape that has been converted more to a rural, residential environment, can’t function anymore as ranch land,” Thompson said.

The easements are meant to avoid subdivisions, gravel pits and more roads.

“At the same time, we’re trying to make sure that economic activities that can take place on the land with it staying intact aren’t limited. We want people to be able to live on the land and make a living on the land,” said Thompson.

The land can be used for activities such as ag tourism, eco-tourism and acting as a film set. They’re opportunities that use the land, but don’t carve it up.

Family vision

Matt Kumlin and his family put part of their land in a conservation easement in the fall of 2022.

Kumlin, who ranches with his wife, Angela, on land mainly owned by his parents, said that everyone came together for a family meeting to discuss the future of the ranch.

“We talked about all the things you can do with land,” said Kumlin, who ranches southwest of Cochrane. “We decided that a conservation easement fit with our family vision and mission the best. We want to conserve a certain portion of the ranch along the Jumping Pound Creek and prevent development in future years.”

The family is in the middle of the succession process, and his parents wanted to see the land preserved.

“It was peace of mind for my dad to ensure the ranch would be intact forever, essentially,” said Kumlin, who took over with Angela in 2018. He said the process for the easement was straightforward.

“Justin and Mike from SALTS met with us multiple times and answered our questions. Their documents are really clear. We weren’t the first in the area to do a SALTS agreement. We talked to the neighbours who had, and they spoke highly of SALTS.”

Once the family figured out the restrictions would not inhibit their ranching operation, they were sold.

“It was a logical choice and a win-win.”

Thompson said more landowners have been contacting them lately.

“There’s more awareness of the value of these remaining intact landscapes — for water, for soil carbon, for habitat, even for high-productivity grazing value.”

He said there’s also a demographic shift as the older generation tries to transfer land to the next generation.

“One of the big benefits of these conservation easements is that sometimes, depending on the estate planning and the individual ranch, we can really facilitate the transfer of the ranch from one generation to the next and help reduce the tax liability or eliminate the tax liability, so the next generation gets the ranch.

“The ranch doesn’t have to be sold off, or pieces don’t have to be sold off. We’re seeing, because there is so much intergenerational turnover, that there is a lot of interest in easements because of the estate-planning advantages.”

Thompson said that almost all the ranchers who have worked with SALTS have been interested in range and riparian health management. SALTS often partners with other ecological groups such as Cows and Fish or the Oldman Watershed Council, which assist with additional riparian fencing or off-stream watering projects.

“We’re actively working with the landowners after the easement to help them do what they want to do from a stewardship standpoint. It’s an ongoing relationship and lately we’ve really increased our ability to bring dollars to the table after the easement to provide some of those extra resources for stewardship,” Thompson said.

SALTS isn’t the only conservation easement group in the province. All the land trusts in the province can be found on the website of the regional land trusts of Alberta www.rlta.ca