Green Cover Best Management Practices - Biodiversity

• Multi-component project including applied research to determine the linkages between an indicator of biodiversity (breeding birds) and the health of riparian areas, and how that relates to grazing productivity (forage production).
• Examined riparian health parameters (many vegetation and physical features) to identify indicators that are linked to biological diversity (using breeding birds) and forage.
• Riparian sites of varying health (healthy, healthy but with problems, and unhealthy) from 6 streams in south western and central Alberta, were examined in pasture land.
• Healthier riparian sites had more shrub cover and significantly more woody plant cover (trees and shrubs) than unhealthy sites. Alterations to streambanks were significantly greater at unhealthy riparian sites.
• More breeding birds used the healthy sites, and this in combination with greater woody plant community cover, suggests structural habitat components were likely greater at the healthy sites. Vegetative parameters related to the tree and shrub community may pose the greatest potential as indicators of biodiversity, in the form of breeding bird communities.
• Combined with other project components, including knowledge evaluation and testing of extension messages, these applied research results will help farmers and ranchers through improved extension messages that provided targeted details on means to improve and enhance biodiversity on farms and ranches.

• Maintaining the ecological integrity and viability of the land is key for not only the landholders’ livelihood, but also the wildlife habitat they manage or conserve.
• The “At Home on the Range Guide – Living with Alberta’s Prairie Species at Risk” is a landholder friendly guide that discusses several ways in which landholders can enhance and maintain native habitat on their land.
• Most of Alberta’s species at risk fall under provincial jurisdiction.
• The success of MULTISAR can be attributed to the multi-species approach, voluntary collaboration, partnerships, and acknowledgement that many of these species still exist due to the conservation practices of landholders.

• Good Pasture Health and sustainable management are important in maximizing the economics of the grasslands as well as maintaining other important land-use objectives like wildlife productivity and biodiversity.
• Avoid over-grazing wetland and riparian areas and if possible limit grazing in these areas to maintain the wildlife productivity of these areas.
• Retention of grasslands at the landscape level is important and provides benefits for the conservation of prairie birds and other wildlife.

• Over ten percent (6 million acres) of Alberta’s landscape is public rangeland representing some of the most ecologically diverse areas within the province.
• In order to detect changes in rangeland diversity that exceeds the range of natural variation and to provide warnings on changes to rangeland health, baseline information that characterizes the ecological process and functions of representative community types is required across the province.
• In 1997 the Rocky Mountain Forest Range Association (RMFRA) started collecting rangeland ecological information and in 1999 Rangeland Management Branch initiated the development of Ecological Succession Description database (ESD) in order to summarize this information. The primary objective of the database was the development of a plant community classification system that can be used by field staff and the public to assess the ecology, health and sustainable stocking rate of ecological sites within each natural subregion.
• The key result of this project was to provide an on demand web based hard copy product that permitted rapid and low cost dissemination of ecological site information. This information is being used by livestock producers, government and non-government staff in the day to day management of the rangeland resource.