LONGVIEW, Alta. – Tony and Debbie Webster feel privileged to live on a ranch in the southern Alberta foothills.
With a panoramic view of the rolling prairie, meandering creeks and native grasses carpeting the hills, the couple believes the landscape is worth protecting.
“I love it out here. It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Tony Webster as he checked fences crisscrossing hilly pastures shaded with Douglas fir and aspens.
Located 50 km south of Longview in Alberta’s historic ranching country, Webster’s family has owned this land since 1946 when his father purchased it after returning from England at the end of the Second World War with his war bride.
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This was Webster’s childhood summer home where the family ran cattle, built fences and tended the grass in an area settled in the 1880s.
Those traditions continue full time at the Webster ranch since Webster retired after 25 years with the Calgary city police and Debbie left her job at the Royal Bank in the mid 1990s.
Although they say they are retired, there is no shortage of work on the ranch. Fences and water sources need constant maintenance and cattle need to be checked and moved.
“I don’t mind that. There was a time I hated coming here with my father,” he said.
As a police constable working first on patrol, then in the crime prevention unit and eventually as a plainclothes detective, Webster’s weekend trips to the ranch eventually became a form of therapy.
When they made preparations to stay there full time, they lived in the original ranch house with no electricity or running water. Debbie learned to cook on a wood stove and made the outhouse as comfortable as possible.
Their new house on a hill was built with the intention of becoming a bed and breakfast. Located on the Cowboy Trail extending from Mayerthorpe to Cardston, they had guests from as far away as South Africa in their first season.
At 1,500 acres, Webster ranch is small by comparison to some neighbouring spreads that are a township or larger in size. Bigger is necessary since more than 30 acres of grass are required to maintain a single cow for the season. Since their herd is small, they share their grass when the neighbours run short.
Their major interest is preserving the ranch’s ecological integrity of native grasslands and alpine terrain.
The Websters are involved in grassland conservation groups, a native plants council, the agriculture service board for the Municipal District of Ranchlands, the development appeal board and riparian groups like Alberta’s Cows and Fish program.
“A lot of neighbours have come on side. The MD of Ranchlands was one of the first to come on side with the Cows and Fish program,” said Webster. They joined the program in 1995 with skepticism and were motivated to make serious changes on their own property.
They have fenced off water sources and installed troughs filled by solar or wind powered pumps. Cattle are rotated around the range and numbers are kept low to protect the fragile grasslands.
An ongoing problem is aspen poplar encroachment. Webster remembered some areas were cleared with a bulldozer years ago and he has invested thousands of dollars in pesticides to spray out the aspen suckers before they crowd out the grass and remove all the water.
The change is obvious when he checks his land from the hilltops.
“In 1960, you could see 13 individual clear pastures, now you can only see five or six,” he said.
Some areas have been cleared through controlled burns but the result has been an ongoing battle against noxious weeds taking hold before grass can regrow.
Being two hours south of Calgary has kept out urban developers for the time being. The MD of Ranchlands development bylaw says no subdivision may be less than a quarter section but Tony worries a slight shift in voters could reverse that decision.
The local population is fewer than 100 people who want to save the wide variety of plant life and wild animals, from gophers to grizzly bears.
In terms of agriculture value, the price per acre is relatively low, but city dwellers looking for a weekend getaway may drive up land prices beyond what local ranchers can afford, Webster said.
“Pretty soon the very reason you move out here has changed and that affects your outcome,” said Debbie.
The resolve of the community may be what saves this bit of pristine wilderness.
“Everybody in this municipal district are ranchers and they want to keep this municipal district the way it is. Even a couple of new people who have moved in love it and they don’t want it to change,” said Webster.
