The Future of Prairie Grasslands
Canada’s most endangered ecosystem needs policy that works for the people who steward it.
Native prairie grassland is the single most endangered ecosystem in Canada. Eighty percent of it has already been lost to agricultural conversion, taking with it critical habitat for more than 60 species at risk, deep carbon stores, and natural systems that filter water and reduce flood risk. What remains continues to disappear, not because producers lack the will to steward it, but because policy, market, and program structures often push decisions the other way.
Grasslands are also a working landscape. Canada’s cattle and beef sector, which depends on healthy grassland, contributes close to $35 billion annually to the national economy. Halting further loss means aligning conservation goals with the economic realities of the people who manage this land every day.
The Centre for Land Conservation works with producer organizations, policy partners, and researchers across the Prairies to close that gap – building the evidence base, relationships, and policy frameworks needed to keep native grassland intact and productive for generations to come.
Our Approach
We believe lasting grassland conservation depends on getting the incentives right, not on prescribing how producers should manage their land. That means:
- Listening first. Producers hold decades of on-the-ground knowledge about what keeps grassland healthy and operations viable. Our work starts by bringing that knowledge into the policy process directly, rather than around it.
- Naming the misalignments. Grain subsidies, unequal insurance support, rising land values, and short funding cycles all create pressure to convert grassland to cropland, often even for producers committed to long-term stewardship. We work to identify these structural barriers clearly so they can be addressed.
- Designing for the long term. Grassland stewardship plays out over 25- to 50-year horizons. We advocate for policy and program design that matches that timeline instead of working against it.
- Building shared frameworks. Durable conservation outcomes require government, producers, Indigenous knowledge holders, and the private sector working from a shared understanding of what’s at stake and what’s possible.
Producer Dialogue: A First Phase of Engagement
In November 2025, we joined the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association, the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development to convene 44 leading-edge prairie producers in Brandon, Manitoba. This producer-led dialogue was the first phase of our current grassland policy initiative, surfacing the challenges and opportunities producers see most clearly from the ground.
Producers pointed to six connected pressures shaping their grassland decisions: profitability and long-term sustainability, government policy distortions and market pressures, land market and access challenges, knowledge transfer and succession, program design for regenerative practices, and labour and mental health strain. From these conversations came a set of practical, producer-informed priorities — including insurance reform, expanded payments for ecosystem services, stronger extension and peer-learning networks, and better tools for measuring and verifying grassland health.
These findings reflect one community’s perspective. As this initiative continues, we’re extending similar engagement to Indigenous knowledge holders to ensure their perspectives shape the work as well, with all findings returning to the producer community for review at a Solution Forum in Fall 2026.
Where This Work Is Headed
Between now and August 2026, we’re working with producer leaders and policy partners to develop and refine the frameworks and investment mechanisms that can turn these priorities into action — creating real economic pathways for producers to maintain and restore prairie ecosystems, without adding prescriptive complexity to their operations.
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