The team behind Guardians of the Grasslands is back with a new film highlighting the role cattle can play in managing wildfire risk.
Too Close to Home, the second short documentary produced by the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association’s Public and Stakeholder Engagement team and their partners, aims to share the benefit of targeted grazing as a wildfire mitigation tool with the public.
“After the success of Guardians of the Grasslands, we had come together as a team at Public and Stakeholder Engagement and decided that we wanted to put together a suite of short documentaries on these benefits of raising beef cattle in Canada and linking them to world events or trends where urban Canadians were really interested in,” says Amie Peck, manager of Public and Stakeholder Engagement.
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When the team learned about pilot projects in B.C.’s Okanagan region to decrease the fuel load near urban communities through targeted grazing, it was a perfect fit for the next short film. Set against the backdrop of increasingly intense wildfires throughout Canada, Too Close to Home shines a spotlight on how cattle can help reduce fire wildfire risk in these landscapes.
“This thought of cattle being community heroes in mitigating wildfire risk for these local communities is just such an interesting story and something that you wouldn’t think of as an immediate benefit to having cattle on the land,” says Peck.
Sarah Wray and Ben Wilson of Story Brokers Media House, who shot and produced the critically acclaimed Guardians of the Grasslands, are the filmmakers behind this new documentary.
“They’re just absolutely the best to work with,” says Peck. “They’re just very comfortable working with cattle and shooting in those conditions, and then they just have such a passion for the beef industry and for these projects.”
The film was shot in the spring of 2021, shortly before the first wildfire of a particularly devastating season in B.C. broke out. B.C. Cattlemen’s Association was featured in the film as the pilot projects’ organizers, along with ranchers, researchers, provincial range officers and representatives from B.C. Wildfire Services.
The intended outcome of this film is similar to the theme and intention behind Guardians of the Grasslands, Peck explains, in making urban Canadians aware of the unexpected benefits of cattle.
“We’re hoping that people are open to the idea of cattle as part of the solution, and so in this instance, with Too Close to Home, it’s about being part of the solution in managing wildfire risk, but if we can reduce the amount of big, devastating fire events, that’s also a benefit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Through their filmmaking experience, Peck and her team have seen firsthand the power of video to convey information to the public. While the short documentary format targets people’s increasingly short attention span, it also lends itself well to the trend of people consuming hours of video content.
“All of the research that we’ve done has pointed to video as being so important for our target demographic, which is millennials and Gen Z,” she says.
“So we’re hoping somebody that maybe necessarily wouldn’t seek out a documentary about cattle, instead maybe has an interest in reducing wildfire risk or in managing climate impacts and comes across Too Close to Home and sees how cattle can be part of the solution.”
The film will be launched through two virtual events, based on audience type, the first of which is a producer-focused launch on April 20. This will provide more details on the grazing pilot projects and the research involved in those.
The second event, on April 21, will be geared towards the public. “That one will really talk about how we’re trying to manage some recreational impacts of having cattle in these areas close to these communities,” says Peck.
This includes “the timing of the year, the short duration that they’re there to limit any inconveniences for people hiking or walking their dogs in the area, and then really just high level linking the reason that the cattle are there and economic and safety benefits that that provides to those communities.”
In celebration of Earth Day, Too Close to Home will be released to the general public on April 22 via YouTube. In the meantime, watch the trailer online or visit the film’s website.
