Today marks World Environment Day, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is celebrating by launching a campaign.  

The Prairie Grasslands Action Plan aims to conserve more than 500,000 hectares of the endangered ecosystem and $500 million in support of that over the next seven years. 

Acting Regional Director for the NCC, Cameron Wood, said the plan takes the work that Nature Conservancy Canada is doing across the Canadian prairies, and accelerates it to ensure sure the valuable resource sticks around well into the future.   

“Our approach going forward is to take a whole of society approach,” he explained. “It's going to continue some of our traditional work of doing direct conservation ourselves, where we're working to purchase land from willing sellers or engage in conservation easements with people, but also really leaning in on partnership opportunities with industry, the agricultural sector and agricultural producers, collaborating with Indigenous nations and really trying to look at the whole society approach. Everything from that active conservation and looking at acquisitions, to supporting stewardship efforts, restoration efforts and really looking across the whole spectrum of being able to preserve the most at-risk ecosystem on the planet, which is the grasslands that we have here in the prairie Canada.” 

What this means for the southwest is conserving over 1,100 hectares of prairie grasslands in the Cypress Uplands.   

Grasslands can store carbon in the soil, help to filter water sources for drinking water, and support local economies in Saskatchewan.  

They also provide biodiversity and wildlife benefits; wildlife commonly found in the area include pronghorn antelope, mule and white-tailed deer, elk and cougar and species at risk such as burrowing owl, chestnut-collared longspur, common nighthawk and ferruginous hawk.  

“Grasslands really are kind of like the unsung hero,” Wood said. “There are so many things that they provide to us as a society that we take for granted and we really have to make sure that we're focusing in on that.  

“It's a really exciting opportunity to build on all the things that have been successful in the past years and to really focus on looking forward to 2030 about how to make sure that conservation works right alongside the needs of society and our community, and really accelerating that work in a very intentional way.”

For more information on the continued efforts of the NCC, explore their website here.