Nature Conservancy of Canada working to protect historic Bob Creek Ranch
A conservation group is working to protect a historic ranch in Alberta's cowboy country.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) and the Waldron Grazing Co-operative have partnered to conserve the Bob Creek Ranch along Highway 22 west of Claresholm.
The 1,000-hectare property will create a contiguous block of more than 43,000 hectares of conserved and protected land within the headwaters of the South Saskatchewan River Watershed.
The land will be a permanent space for game species like elk, moose, deer and grizzly bears to move through.
'The Bob Creek Ranch is significant because it was kind of this hole that was on the northside of the Oldman River,' said Larry Simpson, with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Alberta Region.
'It has two or three miles of river frontage, it has a couple miles of frontage onto the Bob Creek and it's also bordered by the Bobcat Creek Wildland Park.'
The project is part of the NCC's Prairie Grasslands Action Plan, in which the group hopes to conserve more than 500,000 hectares of land in Alberta by 2030.
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