Building Drought Resistance in the Palliser Triangle: Return of the Snow Fence

Fresh spring air flows through the eastern edges of the Palliser Triangle; snow is melting in slow layers, softening the ground beneath overwintered grass. Above, a silhouetted pair of Swainson’s hawks trace wide, silent circles. The sloughs still wear a thin sheet of ice, but water is beginning to move, collecting in low spots and disappearing into the soil. It is here that our mystery begins - whether the water will stay, whether it will pool, and whether it will fill the dugouts. If it doesn’t, and the dugouts do not recharge by early summer, there will not be enough water for the cattle — and hauling water every day for another year is the last thing anyone here wants. So, in the spring of 2025, the Mappin’s are trying something different: a towering Wyoming snow fence, constructed with assistance from RDAR’s PREP grant initiative to catch snow, hold it, and drive more runoff into the dugouts.

Brad and Terri Mappin run a 3,300-acre cattle and forage operation just outside Byemoor, Alberta. They call themselves grass farmers first, cattle are just how they harvest what the land grows. Their grazing system is built around movement, rotating animals as much as possible to give pastures time to rest and recover. It has helped keep their grass and soil healthy and their feed bills manageable, but it only works if water is available and nearby, and over the past few years that has become harder to guarantee. The Mappin’s have watched their dugouts dry up, their winter water supply shrink, and the cost of hauling water rise. “We have been hauling water to cows for the last three or four years,” Terri says. “By the time we hit last fall, out of 26 dugouts, there were three that had water in them.” Each truck load holds 6,500 gallons from a fill in town and costs more than $120, not including fuel, equipment wear, or the three hours it takes out of their day. That’s in winter, on hot summer days when the cattle drink more, the hauling increases.

The inspiration for the Wyoming fence came in summer 2024, at RDAR’s annual Round-Up event in Cremona, AB. The Mappin’s were speaking on how drought had impacted their operation, when RDAR’s VP, Research, Clinton Dobson approached them with an idea. “We hadn’t heard of Wyoming fence,” Terri says. “We came home, started doing some research, and decided to give it a whirl.” They applied to PREP and built four fences (two at eight feet high, two at twelve) to test how fence height affects snow accumulation. The Wyoming fence concept is simple: slow the wind, hold the snow, and increase the chances of spring runoff making it into the dugouts. The Mappin’s see it as an experiment, but one they are hoping will pay off.

The last few years have been dry, not just in Byemoor, but across much of Alberta. Spring storms have failed to show up. Runoff, when it happens at all, has rarely made it to the dugouts. For the Mappin’s, the lack of water has forced some tough decisions. They have reduced their herd by more than 150 head, adjusting to what the land and the water can support. “We had a list up on the fridge,” Terri says. “Dates marked. If we didn’t get water by a certain point, those cows were going.” The cuts weren’t easy. Some were older cows, others were strong animals with years left, but the risk of stretching the system too thin wasn’t worth it. “Either you sacrifice the whole herd,” Brad says, “or you get rid of some, and keep your stock base.”

Having made the cuts they needed to make, water remains the limiting factor, even with fewer animals and tighter grazing rotations. To hold on to what they have, they are starting with snow. One snow fence was placed west of the house, where the dugout had dropped too low to feed the wet well. “We picked areas most critical to our grazing system,” Brad says. In a normal year, the farm’s shelterbelts would catch and hold snow, but drought has taken a toll. “I would prefer trees,” Brad says. Many have not survived the dry cycles of recent years. Trees take time to grow, while the snow fences offer an immediate, mobile fix. If they work, they will move them; once a dugout refills, that fence will be hauled to the next dry site.

That flexibility made them a good fit for a trial. With support from PREP, the Mappin’s were able to test how well the fences work in the context of a working operation. Their farm is now part of a study led by a team at NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology), comparing the return-on-investment of three water strategies: drilling a well, hauling water, or building snow fences.

When John Palliser came through modern-day southern Alberta during his late-1850’s expedition, he characterized the area as more or less arid — a dry grassland with sandy soils that might support livestock but never crops. For much of the last century, people worked with that reality. Snow fences lined pastures and roads, holding drifts where they needed them. Then came the wet years. The dugouts filled, the spring storms showed up, and the fences came down.

“Everyone used to use snow fence,” Terri says. “We just thought we didn’t need it anymore,” Brad adds.

Brad and Terri’s children have only known wet years where water arrives on schedule and stays long enough to make it through summer, but Brad has seen dry spells before. “We’ve gone away from what our ancestors have done” he says. He’s seen the fences come down, and now he’s watching them go back up.

If their grandparents were here to see it, Brad and Terri think they might ask the obvious question. Not why the fences are back, but why they ever disappeared in the first place.