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Land of Milk and Honey
By Bruce Masterman
Summary
Being straight up with landowners has long been a DUC trademark. With the Milk River Ridge as the focal point of the most aggressive effort ever to address declining pintail populations, DUC’s commitment to good will, good relations, solid conservation programs and sound science will be essential in maintaining the Ridge as a little piece of pintail heaven. The alternative, as far as DUC is concerned, is simply not acceptable.
For almost 20 years, DUC has been actively involved in the business of conserving wetlands and raising pintails on the Milk River Ridge, a spectacular 2,700-square-kilometre chunk of rolling fescue grasslands, plateaus and escarpments that dominates the Alberta horizon south of Lethbridge.
Home of the Alberta government-protected Twin River Heritage Rangeland, the Ridge is one of six large blocks of native grassland remaining on the plains of North America. The river from which the ridge takes its name is born in western Montana and meanders through 160 kilometres of southern Alberta before looping back into the United States.
Commonly called “The Ridge,” the area is bounded by the town of Raymond to the north, and the Alberta-Montana border communities of Coutts to the southeast and Carway to the southwest. Created by retreating glaciers more than 10,000 years ago, the pothole-pocked Ridge rises dramatically from the Prairies, a geographical contrast almost as striking as the Rocky Mountains to the west. The top of the Milk River Ridge has an elevation of 1,219 metres, 274 metres higher than the city of Lethbridge.
It provides critical pristine habitat to white-tailed and mule deer, pronghorn antelope, coyotes, ring-necked pheasants, sharp-tailed grouse and many waterfowl species, including northern pintails that find the area so much to their liking that it is not unusual to have 20 breeding pairs of pintails counted in 1.6 square kilometres.
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