A few new patches of land are in the hands of the Nature Conservancy of Canada, including a pair in southwest Saskatchewan.

Two southwest Saskatchewan family-owned land plots have been donated to the organization to help preserve natural prairie ecosystems.

Michael Burak, program director for southwest Saskatchewan with the group, said that being able to receive donations such as this was great.

"We were really glad to partner with some really like-minded landowners that kind of have a similar vision to ourselves as far as the conservation of biodiversity in Saskatchewan."

One of the donations covered just over 1,000 hectares of high-quality land.

"It's in a pretty high biodiversity area in general with quite a bit of species-at-risk presence, as well as some other contiguous large blocks of habitat."

The other local plot of land covered about 82 hectares.

He said that being close to other preserved areas allowed for continuity between ecosystems.

"Even though [continuity is] not necessarily as valuable from a biodiversity conservation perspective, it's much better than having it in annual cropland or anything like that."

Ownership of the land is not transferred to the Nature Conservancy of Canada through the donation, but remains protected under private possession. Burak said that this is a benefit to his organization.

"We probably wouldn't have been able to do this large of an area [if we bought it outright] only just because it's much more expensive to buy it and pay full price for land versus just buying an interest in the land."

Combined, the two projects donated by the same contributor is the largest conservation easement ever in Saskatchewan.