Guardians of the Grasslands

Award-winning short film speaks up for an endangered ecosystem.

Words by Jeff Gaye. Photos by Story Brokers Media House.

You probably know this: unbroken native prairie grassland is a dwindling resource, but a vitally important one. It sequesters tonnes of carbon and provides a habitat of last refuge for a huge portion of Canada’s wildlife species at risk.

You also know that grazing is necessary for the sustainability of this resource, promoting plant health and regenerating the quality of the soil.

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 my way into filmmaking mostly because I had a passion for telling agricultural stories,” she said. Ben, meanwhile, says he is “a recovering aerospace engineer.” He is married to Sarah’s sister Kelly. He doesn’t have an ag background, but “when I fell in love with Kelly,” he said, “I fell in love with agriculture and the culture of agriculture as well.”

Before forming Story Brokers, the two communicated agriculture information through 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.

“We were at a shoot in early July 2019, we happened to be on location where a lady named Kristine Tapley, who is in the film, was speaking,” Sarah said. “She had mentioned that the Canadian grasslands are one of the most endangered ecosystems, and that sort of shocked both Ben and I because we had never really known that.”

Ben and Sarah consider themselves to be attentive to environmental issues, and they were surprised to learn that the Canadian grasslands were as ecologically important, and as threatened, as the world’s most wellknown endangered ecosystems.

Sarah said this was partly because as someone who grew up on the land, she had never seen it as under threat.

“When Ben and I left, we started looking at each other and said, you know, if we ever have an opportunity to tell this story, we need to do it,” she said. “And it just so happened that about two weeks later, we were at beautiful ranch called the Waldron Ranch in southern Alberta. And we looked around and saw we had all the pieces to make Guardians of the Grasslands while we were filming a story about that ranch.”

Sarah and Ben called on passionate, articulate, and knowledgeable spokespeople to explain the issue— Mickenzie Plemel-Stronks, conservation programs specialist with Duck Unlimited Canada; Ben Campbell, a rancher from Black Diamond, Alberta; and Kristine Tapley, regional agrologist with Ducks Unlimited Canada.

The film was first screened in 2019. But as Sarah and Ben began taking it to film festivals, everything slowed down because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The shutdown started happening, so we quickly pivoted and made the film available for private screenings,” Ben said. “Within less than a year, I think there were over 300 private screenings of the film across Canada, across the U.S., and in other countries including South Africa, Europe, all over the world. People were really interested in hearing more.”

Meanwhile, Sarah and Ben continued entering Guardians of the Grasslands into virtual film festivals and offering online viewings.

“We were disappointed that we didn't get to attend some of the bigger festivals in person. We would have travelled to Vancouver, there's one in New York and one in Montreal and Ottawa, and several in Toronto that we would have considered attending in person,” Ben said.

“But on the upside, we were able to participate in a lot of festivals that we maybe wouldn't have been able to get to physically, by being part of virtual speaker panels with several filmmakers. We were answering questions from the public and from people who were really interested after watching a virtual festival.

“So that was really neat. I think we were screened at 25 different festivals and received eight awards,” Ben said. The awards from various festivals were for best director, best research, best cinematography, and best short documentary.

But more important than winning awards, Guardians of the Grasslands has been opening eyes—and maybe changing minds. “It was really neat for Ben and I when we went to these festivals. There were people who are environmentalists, who are scientists. There were people who had a passion for art and culture, and then also a big community of city people and urban people,” Sarah said.

“And their response was really incredible because it was a little bit of shock. For a lot of years they've been told that cattle are harmful to the environment—and for sure there are ways that cattle can be not beneficial.

“But in Canada, they're a really crucial piece, and that was news for them. So it was met with a lot of questions and a lot of investigation into ‘so what do we do now?’

“I think that's exactly why we made the film—to have people stop long enough to reconsider a narrative that has been created over the last few decades around what cattle mean to the Canadian environment.”

Ben recalls a stunning moment when a potential antagonist got up to make a comment. “In Toronto at a screening, there was a woman who stood up during a Q&A session,” he said. “And she said, ‘full disclosure, I am a vegan activist. And I came to this film expecting to feel very differently than I am feeling right now. And what I actually am feeling is shame that I have so many misconceptions about this industry in Canada, and I would like to know what can I do to help?’

“And she said. ‘I might not start eating steak tomorrow, but what can I do to help raise awareness so that more Canadians can do whatever feels right for them to help protect the grasslands?’

“And that was really powerful,” Ben said.

Sarah said there’s a lesson for everyone in the ag industry to learn: we can make inroads with the food-buying public if we can identify shared concerns—like the environment—and explain how we are on the same page.

“This is sort of two facets for me,” she said. “The first one is that as an industry, it’s so important that we start to change the way we communicate with the public. We do such a good job at telling stories, and our stories are naturally something that people respond to. But we have to meet the public where they're at, versus trying to bring them into our world. We've got to find their world and what they care about.

“That was one of the main things with Guardians of the Grasslands. We approached it from a spot that they're already engaging in, which is an endangered ecosystem. And so it was a really easy transition into a story that really matters to our industry. I think a really important lesson from all of this is how do we meet the urban people where they're at, versus trying to change their habits into what we would like them to do.”

She said producers also have to engage with the groups that are already doing the work of conservation.

“The second thing in terms of an action that everybody can take, is [to work] with so many great groups that are already doing a lot of the work on the land—like Nature Conservancy Canada or Ducks Unlimited Canada—who really work hand in hand with ranchers and with the farming industry to ensure that farming and ranching can still happen,” she said.

“They have so many great opportunities, like volunteer opportunities to help take care of the land where you go for a day of fencing, or you can go and help them pull weeds that are invasive. They've also got a ton of opportunities for ranchers and people in the industry to help create projects like offsite watering systems, or different things to do with intensive managed grazing that allow you to care for the land in a way that benefits the entire landscape in your operation.” Guardians of the Grasslands ends with an eloquent and emotional appeal from Mickenzie Plemel-Stronks to consider what we are doing as we take species to the brink of extinction. Sarah says this level of passion and commitment is common among people who know and love the grasslands.

“When you sit down and spend time speaking with different people, all facets of the industry, it's a passion. It's something that's close to their hearts, and we get to experience that from them,” she said.

“We're so incredibly grateful, because that's what keeps us passionate about our work. Mick was incredible, and she's fantastic, but there are so many people like her who care for these grasslands and ecosystems. “And it's why Ben and I do what we do.” Guardians of the Grasslands is available for viewing on YouTube, or through guardiansofthegrasslands.com.