Yesterday’s walk wasn’t a walk. It was more of a stroll, really, through a community pasture about an hour south of the city with a dozen or so birdwatchers and native-plant enthusiasts, led by naturalist and author Trevor Herriot. The walk was a fundraiser for Public Pastures: Public Interests, a group that is advocating for the protection of community pastures in this province. There were lots of longspurs and sparrows and hawks in the sky, including some prairie species I’ve never seen before. Trevor pointed out that grassland songbirds sing while they are flying, which is somewhat unusual, I gather (I’m not a birder although I’m always curious about the birds I see when I’m out for a walk somewhere). These species are all under threat because of habitat loss, and if the community pastures are sold off and the land broken for crop agriculture, they are likely to become extinct. Some 99 percent of the native grassland in this part of the world has been destroyed; is leaving the remaining one percent alone for birds and grasses and forbs really too much to ask?
I’m more interested in plants than birds, and so I hung out with a grassland biologist who was identifying various species of grasses and forbs. I saw a lot of my favourite grass–blue grama grass–and identified a seed head that had stumped the group as shining arnica.There was a huge prickly pear cactus, too, and many pincushion cacti, although all of their flowers had finished blooming. There were a few introduced weeds, but they didn’t matter very much, the biologist said. “A big patch of prairie has a lot of inertia,” he told us. “It can survive a lot of abuse.” The one thing it can’t survive, of course, is being plowed under.
A farmer across the road was out with a big spraying rig applying chemicals to a wheat field. Trevor gestured towards a nighthawk flying ahead of the machine and said, “Someone should take a picture of that–nighthawks are endangered now, mostly because of the effects of agricultural pesticides.” He continued, “You know, the government says that it’s unlikely that these grasslands will be plowed under because the soil isn’t that productive. But look over there, across the road: it’s the same soil there and it’s being farmed.” Even the richest soils have been exhausted of nutrients in over 100 years of farming. Modern agriculture depends on chemical fertilizers so the quality of the soil doesn’t really matter; it’s just something to hold the plants in place.
The walk was cut short when a bull–one of a group of youngish animals in the far corner of the pasture–suddenly got upset that we were walking around in his pasture. As he approached, complaining loudly, we hurried towards the fence and the safety of the grid road beyond. We got back into our cars and drove down the road to look at a wetland, and then, as the sun (reddened from the smoke of distant forest fires) touched the horizon, we turned around and headed back to the city.
Trevor’s book about the plight of prairie songbirds, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds, has been in my to-read pile since it was published. I suppose I should get to it sooner rather than later, although I’m afraid it’s likely to be a depressing read. Nothing seems to matter anymore except making money, and if that means ground-nesting sparrows and pipits and longspurs disappear, if that means that the few scraps of native grassland that are left are destroyed by farming or resource development, so what? If such things don’t have a dollar value, they don’t have any worth. It’s such a sad, impoverished way of looking at the world, and yet it’s the only perspective that seems to matter these days.
I learned a new thing! I never heard of “forbs” before. Thanks Ken!