Guardians of the
Grasslands WORDS BY JEFF GAYE
PHOTOS BY STORYBROKERS MEDIA HOUSE
Short film speaks up for an endangered ecosystem
Y
Ben, meanwhile, says he is “a recovering
a vitally important one. It sequesters tonnes of
sister Kelly. He doesn’t have an ag background,
carbon and provides a habitat of last refuge for a
but “when I fell in love with Kelly,” he said, “I
huge portion of Canada’s wildlife species at risk.
fell in love with agriculture and the culture of
ou probably know this: unbroken native prairie grassland is a dwindling resource, but
You also know that grazing is necessary for the
aerospace engineer.” He is married to Sarah’s
agriculture as well.”
sustainability of this resource, promoting plant
Before forming Story Brokers, the two
health and regenerating the quality of the soil.
communicated agriculture information through
Unfortunately, the people who need to know all this—Canadian consumers—don’t. Sarah Wray and Ben Wilson are filmmakers with Story Brokers Media House. Their short film Guardians of the Grasslands tells about the ecological benefits of beef production, and its role in sustaining the threatened prairie ecosystem. The film has been screened at film festivals across North America, and has won several awards. More importantly, it has opened the eyes of many viewers, especially urban dwellers who had not previously been exposed to good-news stories about ranching and the environment. Sarah describes herself as a “farm girl,” raised on an Angus operation near Bashaw, Alberta. “I made
their website farm.com. “We started getting a lot of requests to do storytelling and video production for other organizations in the ag industry. And we just grew so much that it became our full-time occupation,” Ben said. Guardians of the Grasslands compares the importance of the native prairie ecosystem to that of the planet’s best-known environmental causes, rain forests and coral reefs. It confronts viewers with some difficult facts: only about 20 per cent of native grassland remains, yet it is home to 80 per cent of Canada’s species at risk. But one ranch can sequester the equivalent of 100,000 Canadians’ annual carbon emissions. These facts were stunning even to Sarah and Ben when they first learned them.
my way into filmmaking mostly because I had a
“We were at a shoot in early July 2019, we
passion for telling agricultural stories,” she said.
happened to be on location where a lady named
12
FALL 2021
