A southern Alberta family has donated its 12,300 acre ranch to the University of Alberta.
Edwin and Ruth Mattheis bought the property near Duchess in 1977 and decided to donate it to save it from subdivision.
The area has been ranched for more than 100 years and before that was used by First Nations people for hunting and fishing.
The couple, whose background is in the petroleum business, are alumni of the university.
Edwin Mattheis was raised about 150 kilometres away and Ruth grew up on a farm near Edmonton.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
“Once you have got the land in your blood, it is hard to get rid of it,” he said.
This donation is worth about $12 million and is the largest land bequest of its kind to a Canadian university. The property will be called University of Alberta Rangelands Research Institute – Mattheis Ranch. The university is also establishing the Mattheis Chair in Rangeland Ecology and Management.
The ranch consists entirely of deeded land in one block. It has about 700 acres of cultivated land, while the native rangeland supports wildlife habitat, diverse plant life and riparian zones along the Red Deer River and smaller waterways.
It includes a 1,500 acre Ducks Unlimited wetlands project.
The couple moved into the community in 1977 and working with local ranchers, they learned about range management. They were able to improve the carrying capacity of the ranch from about 240 cows to nearly 1,000.
“The timing for me was incredible because when we moved out here we got to learn and we got to meet the neighbours who were pioneer range-men,” Mattheis said.
They have attached conditions to the gift and want serious research conducted on the ranch that gives real value to the agricultural community.
“The timing is now ripe for the university to demonstrate it is possible to do some ethical research and to try and restore the ethos that scientific research should have,” he said.
“They have given me the commitment that they will work toward restoring people’s confidence.”
The couple has lifetime tenancy on the property, which will remain a working ranch that also supports research and teaching opportunities in rangeland and pasture management, said John Kennelly, dean of agriculture at the University of Alberta.
“The type of research that can be conducted there is something that we want to build in the faculty. The timing of this is absolutely perfect for us. The donation of land allows us over the next number of years to build a research program that is very important for the province, nationally and internationally.”
The university plans to set up research facilities on the site that will take five to 10 years to complete. It is already talking with other campuses and government to share the property.
Local ranchers also use it for grazing and Kennelly said that relationship is likely to continue.
“We are not putting a fence around this just for the U of A. We are very interested in a campus Alberta approach,” he said.
“We will decide as a faculty what types of livestock research will be occurring at the ranch. We anticipate we will continue the same arrangement with the local ranchers.”
The university will also take over the oil and gas leases, which fits well with the land reclamation studies underway.
“A lot of the species that are there are rare, threatened or endangered in Alberta. There is a great danger, unless somebody is interested in preserving those areas, they could be lost forever,” Kennelly said.
The Mattheis Ranch complements the university’s land holdings, which includes a 12,000 acre ranch at Kinsella in central Alberta and a 777 acre purchase of farmland from the Bocock family at St. Albert in 2008.
