Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
An uptick in drought and other extreme weather events has beef producers in the U.S. and Canada thinning their herds in near-record numbers, which could lead to supply problems in the beef industry over the longer term, industry experts say. Producers will increasingly struggle with profitability amid the unpredictable seasons as climate change makes drought, flooding and wildfires more common, they say.
70-year-old Arnold Balicki says he has never seen a drought like this in his ranching area about 45 kilometres west of Prince Albert. The cattle producer and his family have to haul water to the pastures to make sure their animals have enough to drink. Other producers in the province have to do the same. "Our water supplies are dwindling very fast," said Balicki, who owns and operates the LB Ranch north of Shellbrook together with his family.
We start with a weather update, where a water shortage in Manitoba is creating challenges for the province’s cattle producers. “We’ve got surface water conditions that are the lowest that I (can) recall,” Tyler Fulton, president of Manitoba Beef Producers, told the Western Producer. “If the current moisture situation… is not unprecedented, we’d have to go back 40 years to find something similar.” Dry conditions also have farmers in British Columbia’s Saanich Peninsula are irrigating early thanks to an unusually warm spring. CTV News reports. Meanwhile, south of the border, drought conditions in the Western U.S. are worsening. As CNN reports, drought is being experienced in 88 per cent of the region — with all areas of California, Oregon, Utah and Nevada listed as being in a drought.
