WATERTON, Alta. – Mountains crowned with snow and set against dramatic skies lord over the rolling plains and meandering river valleys. It is land with something for everyone, but not enough dirt to go around.
Generations of cattle-producing families have made their homes in the Rocky Mountain foothills of southwestern Alberta. For some, that has been part of the problem – too many generations, too little ranchland. The growing wealth of the 1990s allowed urban residents to compound the challenges facing this established way of life, changing the face of land use in the region and pushing farming out.
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Some agriculturalists who fled their farms with full billfolds, as well as governments with jingling coffers embraced the change. Others, fearing the effect it was having on their way of life, looked for alternatives.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada reacted to the change as a threat and an opportunity. In July, after seven years of work, the Toronto-based conservation group announced it had secured title to Canada’s largest single conservation of land, 27,000 acres, nearly 100 sq. kilometres of ranchland at the entrance to Waterton Lakes National Parks.
New homes planted in rural soil but with obvious urban roots began to pop up along the mountains’ edge 20 years ago. Stretching south from Calgary through cattle country, the urban sprawl eventually reached the ranching municipality of Pincher Creek.
New houses were being paid for with money smelling of petroleum rather than manure.
Ten years ago the march of these mega-homes also launched westward from scenic mountain-view areas nearer the dry prairie city of Lethbridge and southwest through the Rural Municipality of Cardston.
The homes spread south and west, enticing municipal district governments with new tax revenues and luring landowners and developers with mountain-high land values.
The sprawl stopped at the gates of Waterton Lakes National Park and met at the Waterton River. Demand for land and new homes continued to build through the late 1990s and into the next century.
The Nature Conservancy also wanted the land and began acquiring titles and long-term leases from local cattle producers as early as 1996.
The leases generally allowed producers to remain on the land for up to 50 years, but did not allow further development.
Earlier in the acreage development game, the MD of Pincher Creek had come to realize that limits on development were needed if the local residents were to remain mainly farmers.
Bob Jenkins was a municipal councillor in the district at the time and, with his brother, operates a five-generation family ranch that spreads nearly to the hinges of the park gates.
“Development of country homes has been good for some and bad for others,” he said.
“If your land was your retirement with nobody to pass it on to, it was great to have that investment go up in value. But if you wanted your kids to ranch, well, expanding your land base with farming money is out of the question.”
Jenkins and his family saw the conservancy option as more than just protecting ranchland from development. For them, “like lots of folks around here,” the success of pioneering the area resulted in large families.
Since 1887 the ranch has been sold within the Jenkins family five times with multiple inheritances fracturing the ownership of what was once a ranch stretching over thousands of acres.
“There were four of us, trying to scratch a living out of this place, 10 other (family) owners all happily taking next to nothing for their share,” he said. “We sold some small pieces off and distributed the money, but it was never enough.”
The rise in land values increased the pressure to sell.
“We’re not unique here,” Jenkins said. “There are lots of folks in the same boat. Inheritances, divorces, family fights. There are always threats to the ranching here.”
As well, expansion was restricted by expensive grain and irrigation farmland to the east, mountains to the west and the U.S. border to the south.
The Jenkins family sold to the conservancy, settling the issue of payment for land and providing long-term leases to Bob and daughter Jennifer, allowing them to continue the family ranch.
The clock is now ticking, but Jennifer feels 47 years will be long enough for the ranch.
Tom Jenkins, Bob’s brother, took his share of the proceeds and bought a ranch in Saskatchewan, allowing his children to continue raising cattle.
Just across the Waterton River, in the MD of Cardston, another cattle producer and former close friend of Jenkins, Jim Garner, also faced an acre shortage and pressures to sell.
Garner, a former provincial cabinet minister in Saskatchewan, sold his farm in the 1980s and settled in southwestern Alberta with his wife Angel.
But the generally poor grazing land in the area wasn’t productive enough to support the 200 cows he needed to support his family.
He bought and drove a large snow blower, clearing winter roads for the natural gas industry. He diversified his farm with a gravel pit and trucking business, but he said the 380 acres still were too small “with kids in university.”
He switched to Texas Longhorns because of their ability to thrive on scant feed and built a small store, the only one within 20 kilometres of the park gates.
“Here we are with the best view in the world, at the gates of a national park. Every other national park in southern Canada has some development at its gates. Not this one,” Garner said.
Meanwhile, property values jumped from hundreds of dollars an acre to $1,800.
“Two quarters of land across from me, the conservancy paid $5,000 (per acre),” Garner said.
He decided to develop 120 acres of his land for houses and eventually won the right to do so after several years of court and other battles with conservation organizations, the MD of Pincher Creek and his neighbours.
So far, only a couple of houses have been built, with six lots sold.
“The conservancy has done me a favour,” Garner said. “They now have title to all the land around me and it will never be developed. It’s a selling point for my project.”
The conservancy recently sent estimators to value Garner’s land and he said he is willing to sell for the right price.
“You have to remember the NCC helped to drive these prices up. Mine included.”
Craig Smith, a cattle producer at Hillspring, Alta., said the completion of the NCC’s acquisition will help stabilize area land prices.
“All things considered, almost everybody is glad the NCC will be curbing development in the area.”
The conservancy acquisition was made possible by large donations from the Ontario-based Garfield Weston Foundation and Edmonton’s Poole Construction family.
