The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association has launched a wildfire relief fund to help ranchers affected by devastating wildfires in Burstall, Leader, Tompkins, and Glentworth areas.
Stock Growers President Shane Jahnke says tens of thousands of acres were burnt in the fires, and close to a million dollars worth of livestock died in the fires or had to be euthanized. Some producers have lost over half their herds.
Jahnke says their collecting donations of cash, hay, feed, trucking, fencing supplies, labour – whatever people can offer.
He says the drought conditions that fuelled the fires had already caused feed shortages, and now producers need to buy winter feed to replace the grass and the bales they lost to the fires.
Jahnke said that with winter coming, there are a lot of people who need help.
"The hardship is going to be hard even to imagine and put into dollar value when you have producers possibly loosing up to half their heard, with cattle losses as well, you get that native grass burnt up, it's hard to put a value on that, on the loss as ranchers we take great pride on banking grass and leaving grass for the following year and if we don't get the right conditions it can take years to get that grass back to the same condition it once was."
Source : Discoverestevan