The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) recently added a vital chunk of native grassland and shoreline to their portfolio located in the southwest.

Last Wednesday morning the national non-profit organization announced the purchase of almost 1,600 acres along the eastern shoreline of Chaplin Lake.

The site known for bird watching is part of a critical habitat area in conjunction with Old Wives Lake and Reed Lake according to Michael Burak, the NCC's program director for southwestern Saskatchewan.

"The three lakes are known as the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network site," he said. "It's one of only three sites in Canada that's been given the designation of being important to migratory shorebirds on a hemispheric level."

The trio of areas plays host to the majority of the world's sanderlings population during migration every year. Chaplin Lake specifically witnesses over 30 different species of migratory birds during springtime.

"You can see some really impressive numbers of birds congregated there particularly in the spring as they make their way up to the arctic for nesting," he said.

At least four types of birds have been spotted at the NCC's newest piece of land that are on Canada’s Species at Risk Act; chestnut-collared longspur (threatened), ferruginous hawk (threatened) long-billed curlew (special concern), and piping plovers (threatened).

"We had a nesting pair of them (ferruginous hawks) this past summer and I think they've been there for quite a few years," he said. "There's only a handful of trees out on the property and they've got a big stick nest in one of them."

The section of land now owned by the NCC at Chaplin has been dubbed the 'Mackie Ranch' in honour of the family's longtime care for it.

"It's been very well managed for well over 100 years now by the Mackie family," he said. "The soils out there are particularly sandy so you do need to be careful with the number of cattle that you put out in an area like that and they've been very diligent over the years."

Moving forward the family will lease the land from the NCC and continue to graze cattle on it to help keep the grass healthy.