Dr. John Pattison-Williams, president of Pattison Resource Consulting and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, presented at the CFGA’s 15th Annual Conference, Roots to Success: The Foundation of Resilient Agriculture. His presentation discussed integrating stakeholder perspectives - future grassland learning and knowledge collaboration. Here are some highlights from his presentation. 
 
There are a lot of different perspectives when it comes to grasslands. Stakeholders come from diverse vantages including academic, farmer, ag extension, Indigenous voices, government, and they don’t always agree. When working on grassland conservation and thinking about stakeholder engagement, it’s important to know what is out there (inventories like the National Grassland Inventory), biology (species, nutrients, soil, carbon), economics (can motivate change beyond the science), human dimensions (values that influence actions) and policy (what regulations and how this trickles down to community). 
 
Canada is losing grasslands, only 38 per cent of the temperate grassland landscape remains. John said we’re losing grassland birds and other species on this landscape and this can be assessed using the CFGA Habitat and Biodiversity Assessment Tool (HBAT) or the Bird Friendliness Index.  
 
There is a proposed grassland project to integrate all this knowledge and learning into a hub – as a collaboration between the University of Alberta, the Restore Assert Defend (RAD) network, Ducks Unlimited Canada and the CFGA. The project will look at the shared pillars of:   

• Economics (drivers of grassland conversion, biophysical gaps, leakage, private landowner models)  
• Human dimensions (Indigenous governance perspectives, religious perspectives, succession planning)  
• Policy (policy scan, private incentives, insurance and perverse incentive, Indigenous perspectives) 
• Community of practice (to bring everyone together to seriously think about these topics) 
• Knowledge transfer (to hold all this information, build trust and communicate this meaningfully and well to different groups) 

“To this point, there has been great work done on grasslands, but all in silos,” said John, “This project is our response to integrating it all together.” 

2024 conference recordings   
To hear all of this presentation, you can purchase access to it, and all of the recordings from the 2024 conference proceedings. Note, the recordings are available for free to those who registered for the 2024 conference. For more information, email [email protected].