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Photo: Tim Romanow
After only one year, the AESA program in the Cardston County has made a lot of inroads, focusing particularly on riparian management and sustainable grazing issues. Cardston County is unique in its diversity of land types and agricultural practices. The vegetation ranges from lodge pole pine forests to aspen willow complexes, rough fescue and mixed grass prairie. Over 50 percent of the land is cultivated, and 40 percent still in native prairie. As the program expands, additional efforts will focus on nutrient management, integrated cropping, pest management and water quality issues.
“We held a Remote Watering Systems and Riparian Management Tour last summer in the Del Bonita area, which is on the edge of the Milk River ridge,” says Tim Romanow, Rural Conservation Extension Specialist. The tour highlighted several existing innovative stock water options that producers are already using, along with a few new technologies that producers could use to improve water quality, and riparian management. “It was a really good tour, with 27 producers attending.” Other partners included the County of Warner, McIntyre Ranch, Nature Conservancy of Canada and AAFRD.
“We also had four remote watering demonstration systems available for local producers to borrow and use over the summer,” says Romanow. As a result, there were about 5 producers who have invested money in their own systems. “It makes a lot of sense that producers would want to invest in improving the quality of the water for their stock.” At the end of the season, with even 100 steers for example, they can realize a weight gain of 10 percent because of improved water quality. That can translate into 15 or 20 more pounds going to market. “It adds up pretty fast and makes it fairly economical in the end.”
Last year Romanow co-hosted an invasive weeds and grazing workshop event in the western part of the county, with over 35 people participants. “We also worked with Cows and Fish to hold a Riparian Health Workshop near Mountainview. It was co-hosted with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, a major easement and land holder in the area.”
Romanow also helped initiate the Lee Creek Watershed Group, which flows from the east end of Waterton Lakes National Park through Cardston, where it eventually flows into St. Mary’s River. “There are a lot of issues this group is addressing, including invasive weeds and in particular erosion problems,” says Romanow. “They have had three 1-in-100 year flood events in the past 10 years, stressing riparian areas and creating a lot of erosion issues.” They are looking at some off stream watering demo projects, including riparian corridor fencing and some bioengineering demo sites. The town of Cardston, who recently joined the Group, is also interested in developing a storm water awareness campaign based on the ‘yellow fish road’ program.
The Group recently secured $14,000 from the Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk. Two of the species at risk in the watershed are the St. Mary sculpin (fish species) in the lower 15 kilometers of the creek, and the western blue flag iris, which is scattered throughout the basin. “With this funding, the Group plans to develop an integrated pest management program for the basin, including some additional biological control release sites for leafy spurge control,” explains Romanow.
“We’re also conducting an interesting Integrated Pest Management project, looking at reduced risk pesticide trials using a new chemical registered for spotted knapweed, Aminopyralid, which has zero or low toxicity to aquatic organisms,” says Romanow. “We’re hoping we can get two for one by improving the survival of the existing biocontrol agents, instead of working against them.” Romanow says the Group has a really ambitious workplan for the coming year, and with the new funding and keen members, they are ready to move forward.
The Alberta Environmental Farm Plan is also important in the County of Cardston, and starting to catch producers’ attention. Several larger producers and more of the mixed farm and ranch community have now completed environmental farm plans. “In terms of landbase, that means about one-third of the county, which has nearly 900,000 acres, has an environmental farm plan attached to it,” says Romanow.
In early February, Romanow held a nutrient management planning and mortality composting workshop for confined feeding operations, with approximately 20 participants. There are more water demos planned for the summer, and Romanow is partnering with the County of Warner, and Forty Mile/Cypress to plan a three-day Grazing School in June. “This is the first year of our program,” says Romanow. “We’re off to a pretty good start, but we have a long way to go.” Romanow hopes the weather, which was an issue for almost every event he held last year, is more cooperative this summer.
For more information, contact:
Tim Romanow at (403) 653-4977 or email: tim@cardstoncounty.com |
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