The Transboundary Conservation Partnership workshop went off without a hitch last week, showcasing peak sustainability in both farming practice and ecosystem management. 

The event featured many innovative ways of looking at conservation, including open discussion forums, speaker panels, case studies, and professional presentations. The goal of the convention was to create better practice in the three areas with similar ecosystems: Alberta, Montana, and Saskatchewan. 

Carolyn Gaudet, the manager of the Saskatchewan Prairie Conservation Action plan held the chair position of the planning committee, making sure the two-day event was a success. 

“I'd say they went pretty smoothly,” stated Gaudet. “We had about 110 people attend, which is our highest attendance in the last 7 years we've done it... We set up the schedule so that there's a lot of time for networking, like long coffee breaks, a cocktail hour, things like that, so that people can talk to each other and collaborate; learn from each other. Throughout the two days, we had a lot of really good engagement from the audience, asking a lot of pertinent awesome questions to our speakers.” 

Experts in many fields attended the assemblies, from parks conservation experts to cattle producers, and everything in between. Sessions on biodiversity, restoration of native prairie, grazing programs, and carbon sequestration gave the group plenty to discuss, rethink, and begin putting into action. Gaudet references the Central Prairies Living Lab project as an example. 

"They're trying to use native Prairie as a gold standard, as in that's the best of the best in terms of biodiversity and carbon sequestration and things like that,” she explained. “Then, how we can create that using other methods like poly-cropping or regenerative agriculture and things like that. So, we heard from all of them that are doing those kinds of things on the ground.” 

Every year the workshop moves to a different jurisdiction. Last year was in Alberta, this year it's in Saskatchewan, next year will be in Montana. This is the 7th year of this collection of presentations, trade show tables and forums. 

“The one thing to take home is that grassland conservation is very important,” Gaudet expressed. “It's not so bad in Alberta and Montana, but we've lost quite a bit and it's really important to maintain what's left in terms of biodiversity and the types of ecological goods and services that we can offer, as well as the other kind of benefits that we get from it, like being able to see different types of grasses and birds.” 

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