The causes are different but grasslands are imperiled across North America.

In some parts of the continent, including in the Thompson, grasslands are destroyed by housing development. In others, such as Trevor Herriot’s home province of Saskatchewan, destruction of habitat comes from cultivation of farmland.

While the causes are different, the results are the same: loss of habitat eventually leads to local extinction of plants and animals, called extirpation.

Herriot is the author of a new book on grasslands that looks at their loss in light of birds. And one of those birds is familiar to everyone in Kamloops.

Burrowing owls are the focus of a long-term project, involving the B.C. Wildlife Park, to reintroduce the birds to Interior grasslands. They are extirpated in B.C.

In Saskatchewan “they’re heading that way,” Herriot said

“We have a couple of hundred pairs that we know of.”

Another species extirpated in B.C. — sage grouse — has been reduced to a recent census count of 33 males in Alberta and 50 in Saskatchewan.

Herriot is coming to B.C. cattle country Saturday with a provocative thought: cattle are killing birds. And, it should be noted, he’s the guest of the cattle-centric B.C. Grasslands Conservation Council and will be the invited guest at a steak dinner.

He is speaking as part of the Grasslands celebration event put on by the conservation council. The free day of activities is based in Lac Du Bois on Saturday.

It’s not ranchers Herriot takes aim at, however; it’s the feedlot industry used to fatten cattle for a short period before they are taken to slaughter. The process provides a fatter, tender product that North Americans have become used to in the past three decades.

The alternative is grass-fed beef that is not put on grain before slaughter. It remains a niche product.

Herriot said the B.C. Interior is ahead of Saskatchewan in offering grass-fed beef through efforts of Kamloops-based marketing organization Black Creek Ranch.

“A lot of problems come with the industrial scale of agriculture we use to feed ourselves from grasslands.”

Grain-fed beef requires millions of hectares of land devoted to growing grain to fatten cattle — and that comes with an environmental price.

The industrial scale Herriot mentions comes from the feedlot and meatpacking side, based in Alberta. Herriot, the author of recently published Grass, Sky, Song, about the disappearance of grassland birds, proposes what he calls an alliance of consumers and producers.

That alliance, promoted through the local food movement, could push efforts to move consumers to grass-fed beef.

Organic beef, he writes in a blog, is not the answer.

“The truth is, a producer can be certified as organic and still plough up all of his native grassland, ruin a creek bed with his animals, destroy habitat for species at risk, and fatten his animals entirely on grain before slaughter — as long as no artificial fertilizers and pesticides are used.”

Instead, Herriott said, the industry should move toward a certification program similar to that used in the forest industry that promotes sustainability and health.

“We’re not going to give up eating meat,” he said in a telephone interview.

“We have to pay more. We’ve gone too low on price. Because of that we can’t help producers make the right decisions. Ecological costs are not embedded in the stores.”