Uncovering Successes and Gaps: Exploring the Landscape of Learning and Knowledge Transfer in Grassland Management

Grasslands are among the most endangered and least protected ecosystems in Canada, yet they are essential to agri-food systems. Working grasslands provide essential ecosystem services while supporting rural livelihoods, with livestock producers representing key stakeholders whose decisions directly influence grassland health. Despite longstanding conservation efforts, grasslands and the professionals who work within them face mounting pressures from climate variability and competing development interests. In this context, effective learning and knowledge transfer (LKT) is critical for enabling climate-smart innovation and ensuring practices grounded in both science and lived experiences. LKT connects research, policy, and practice involving technical dissemination, co-creation and application of knowledge across diverse actors. However, the effectiveness of grassland LKT remains uneven, with successes in some areas and persistent gaps in others. Prior research suggests several drivers of this unevenness, including limited training and knowledge exchange, complex land tenure, fragmented governance, and lack effective monitoring and evaluation tools. As part of the Grassland Learning Knowledge Hub, this work examines how LKT professionals support landowners and managers in sustainable management, conservation, and restoration of grasslands. Our objectives are to: (1) map landscape of grassland LKT activities, (2) identify frameworks and institutional arrangements that enable collaborative learning and dissemination, (3) highlight promising approaches to coalition-building and effective implementation, and (4) examine capacity needs and identify tools to strengthen system-wide learning and impact. We present findings from an environmental scan of over 70 organizations, institutions and programs engaged in grassland conservation and preliminary insights from our semi-structured interviews with LKT professionals on their successes, challenges, and needs.