MERRITT – A BC Forest Practices Board investigation has found instances of non-compliance related to overgrazing have damaged open grasslands in the Mine pasture, part of the Coutlee Range Unit near Merritt.
The investigation was initiated after a complaint by two of six range agreement holders who share grazing rights in the Coutlee Range Unit under a single range use plan. The complaint related to livestock grazing practices, fence maintenance and compliance with the grazing schedule.
The board found that actions in the range-use plan were written in ways that prevented them from being measured. As a result, it could not determine whether required actions were being followed, making compliance with the plan unenforceable.
The board also found that an amended 2023 grazing schedule was not legally valid because it was not signed by all agreement holders, as required.
“When range-use plan requirements are not measurable or verifiable, there is no reliable way to determine compliance or whether intended outcomes are being achieved,” says Forest Practices Board vice-chair Gerry Grant. “This is a recurring issue the board continues to identify in its range-related investigations and audits.”
Grasslands, which account for just 1% of BC’s land mass, are important for forage and food security. However, these lands are increasingly under threat from development, degradation due to improper use such as grazing or recreation, or invasive species such as spotted knapweed.
Grant says the board typically conducts one range audit per year, but has seen a slight uptick in complaints, mostly related to overgrazing on grasslands. In the past five years, there have been five complaints, compared with just two in the previous five years.
Old problem
The poor condition of the Mine pasture has been raised since 2009. That year, a BC Ministry of Forests forage supply review recommended reducing authorized grazing by more than half, estimating it would take 50 years to reach full recovery. The ministry and range users in 2024 and 2025 also agreed to reduce authorized grazing, resulting in only 30% of the use levels recommended in the 2009 forage analysis were used.
The ministry says it also meets with the agreement holders as a group every year to review shared use of the range, and to confirm grazing rotations for the upcoming season.
It notes the Mine pasture also includes a designated recreation area and “there are a variety of land uses and disturbances that impact the health of the area, including wild horse grazing.”
“The Ministry continues to work with Range Act agreement holders in adapting better practices and reducing the impacts of authorized livestock grazing,” the ministry says in a statement to Country Life in BC.
Multiple users complicated
Mike Dedels, a former range agrologist with the BC Forest Service and executive director of the Grasslands Conservation Council of BC, says it’s challenging to create and enforce range use plans with multiple users because one can’t be sure after the fact who is out of compliance.
It’s also difficult to manage small areas of grasslands within forest pastures, especially those like the Mine pasture which have lost forage to encroachment and infilling over time.
“In most forests with small grass or wetland areas, it’s hard to keep cows off those open areas,” Dedels says, adding virtual fencing might be a good possibility in this case. “The challenge is you can reduce the numbers, but the cattle are going to hang around their favourite spots.”
The threat to grasslands is putting pressure on the province’s food security.
In a recent webinar, Dedels noted grasslands are one of the few places where you can produce food from a relatively intact ecosystem, as healthy grasslands safely capture, store and release water as well as carbon.
“Most people don’t even know we have them, and a lot of people who live in them don’t even know the value of grasslands,” he says. “Most of what you see on your plate comes from lands that have been totally switched over to crop production, but in the case of cattle and sheep industries, you can produce food from fairly natural systems.”
BC Cattlemen’s Association president Werner Stump declined to comment on the specific case, but says better management of stock on range tenures could correct issues of overgrazing.
The province could also help by placing the same focus on grassland resources in open forest stands as it does on timber, he adds.
“The health of our grasslands sustains our industry and our resources,” he says. “Provincially, we do not pay the same attention to the majority of forage resources as we do to timber.”
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