Canada
The Recovery Strategies for Industrial Development in Native Grasslands project is a multi-stakeholder initiative to provide guidance to minimize future impacts, and promote effective reclamation/restoration of past and future disturbances in native grasslands. The purpose of the manuals is to set projects up for success and to provide expectations and understanding of what is required to reach the outcome of restoration over time.
The manual for the Dry Mixedgrass is one of four, designed for each of southern Alberta’s Natural Subregions that support native grasslands. Recovery strategies and guidance on target seed mixes are linked to range plant communities and reclamation issues present in each of southern Alberta’s prairie, parkland and montane grassland communities. Standard grassland assessment tools (soils and landscape mapping, range plant community guides and range health assessment) are applied to understand restoration risks of developing or decommissioning a project area. The 2023 update to the manual for the Dry Mixedgrass reflects regulatory guidance developed in the past 10 years, use of newer mitigations like matting, and the experiences of reclamation practitioners working to meet the standards of the 2010 Reclamation criteria for Wellsites and Associated Facilities for Native Grasslands.
The strategies are not intended to be prescriptive, but rather strive to present options and pathways to enable selection of the most appropriate recovery strategy for the type of disturbance being decommissioned or planned on a site-specific basis.