PublishedHeifers, bulls and calves roam free through the 65,000-acre pasture of native grassland at Plateau Cattle Co. in Nanton Alberta in June 2017.
Cherie Copithorne-Barnes fears that 135 years of her family’s ranching legacy will end with her. On 16,000 acres west of Calgary, she follows in the footsteps of three generations who have raised beef cattle before her. But what was once an expansive landscape of grassy plains has increasingly been swallowed up by a combination of subdivision developments and forest encroachment for conservation.
Over the years, she said, many family members and friends have been pushed out of farming and ranching due to the disruption and pressure of public and private development projects. “It feels our value has been forgotten,” she said. “My family lives by the philosophy that we must leave this land in a better condition than we’ve found it. Preserving our native grasslands plays an important role in that, but there seems to be no acknowledgement of this from any government.”