Tara Mulhern Davidson wrote this article for the Western Producer. It originally appeared in the June 5, 2026 issue and is reprinted with permission.
Our prairie landscapes were once a sea of uncultivated grasslands. Needle grasses, wheatgrasses, and hundreds of other wildflowers and native plants blanketed the land as far as the horizon stretched.
This iconic ecosystem even inspired our region of Canada to be known as “the Prairies.”
Eventually, most of the wild prairie was settled and parcelled out into homesteads and fields for annual crop production. Paradise was broken up and paved to make way for roads, towns, cities, energy harvesting and other developments.
Twenty years ago, when I was a new college graduate beginning a career in range management, approximately 20 per cent of Saskatchewan’s prairie was still intact. Today, that number has dropped to less than 14 percent.
The United Nations has declared 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. Their objective is to create awareness of the global importance of rangelands and the people who steward them.
On a local level, each year the Saskatchewan Prairie Conservation Action Plan works with relevant provincial ministries to proclaim the third week in June as Native Prairie Appreciation Week.
Saskatchewan is home to some of North America’s most pristine working rangelands, yet today native grasslands remain at risk of being plowed under.
Spikes in land prices and rental rates, agriculture policies on crop insurance and business risk management, and dramatic shifts in land ownership all put pressure on the last odds and ends of prairie wool.
Producers who sustainably graze prairie forego the opportunity to generate more dollars per acre faster from an insurable commodity such as wheat or canola in return for stewarding something that lasts.
Prairie conservation is a long game
Producers need resilience, adaptability and staying power to manage these fundamentally important landscapes. Oddly enough, those characteristics are precisely what make rangelands unique and valuable.
Meanwhile, these grasslands, once referred to as “wasteland,” provide society with dozens of benefits that cannot be replicated elsewhere.
Prairie ecosystems provide a variety of benefits:
- Sequester carbon and other nutrients.
- Provide critical habitat for pollinators, wildlife, and species at risk.
- Filter, buffer and improve water infiltration.
- Conserve biodiversity.
- Provide a varied and nutritious diet for livestock.
Prairie also links us to our past, reminding us of our history and culture.
Many prairie grasslands have been left behind in a cloud of dust.
We can’t go back in time and reverse land use changes.
Yet, perhaps a UN declaration gives us a chance to look at our dwindling rangeland with fresh eyes.
What can we do to stop further losses? What ag policies or programs are in place today that nudge producers toward plowing prairie? What can we do to support the farmers and ranchers who take care of this resource?
We should pay homage to the prairie grasslands upon which our modern-day agricultural systems, economies and way of life were built.
It’s the least we can do for a crop that has been growing for 10,000 years.
Tara Mulhern Davidson
Tara Mulhern Davidson is a writer and beef and forage consultant. Along with her family she runs the Lonesome Dove Ranch, a Gelbvieh cow-calf operation in southwestern Saskatchewan.
Birdsong On The Range
