Why a national conservation group bought this 2,700-hectare piece of tall grass prairie

A national conservation group says it has bought one of the biggest privately owned chunks of tall grass prairie in Manitoba, marking the start of a campaign to conserve thousands of hectares of one of the world's rarest dry land ecosystems.

Lake Ranch in the southern Interlake regionis nearly 2,700 hectares of an iconic and endangered Manitoba ecosystem.

Thedirector of conservation with theNature Conservancy of Canada's Manitoba region said, in general, native prairies are disappearing at an "astounding rate."

"Tall grass prairie in particular there's only about one per cent left, so the fact that we've been able to secure and conserve thousands and thousands of acres of it all in one patch is really something that is nationally significant,"Cary Hamel toldRadio Noonhost Marjorie Dowhos on Thursday.

It's one of the largest land acquisitions ever by the Nature Conservancy, Hamel said.

The piece of land in the rural municipality of Woodlands is almost 10 times bigger than Winnipeg's Assiniboine Forest, three-quarters the size of Birds Hill Provincial Park, one-third the size of the southwestern Manitoba city of Brandon and two-thirds the size of the southern Manitoba city of Steinbach, according to the conservancy.

The land contains intact tall grass prairie, forest, wetlands and portions of the East Shoal Lake complex, the organization said in a news release.

"It's this amazing mix of forest and prairies, and it's kind of right under our noses, full of endangered species," Hamel said.

More than 112 bird species,including 11 shorebirds,have been spotted there and at adjacent lakes. The area is also home to several federally or provincially listed threatened species, including the Sprague's pipit and the bobolink, the release said.

More than half of the species spotted there only live in native prairie habitat, Hamel said.

The Nature Conservancy said the purchase marks the start of a Manitoba grasslands campaign that it hopes willconserve thousands of hectares of the ecosystem over the next five years. To do that, it aims to raise $25 million.

The size of Lake Ranchwill help the Nature Conservancy "maintain the landscape-scale disturbances" needed to maintain the grassland's ecological integrity, including compatible grazing and prescribed burns, the organization said.

The non-profit said it bought the land from the Lake Ranch Group from Germany, which had a vision of turning the grasslands into an ecological preserve and recognized the Nature Conservancy as an organization that could do that.

The previous owners also wantedto support the local economy through continued agricultural use of the land, which has been managed as a livestock operation for almost 100 years, the release said.

The grasslands that are still there exist because of the relationship between compatible livestock grazing and healthy grasslands, it said.

The land will bean accessible conservation area that will engage residents, provide ecotourism opportunities and connect visitors to nature, the release said.

The project had financial backing that included $1.4 million from the federal government's natural heritage conservation program, the release said. The German company that sold the land also donated over 20 per cent of the property's value.

Amid what Hamel called the "twin crises" of biodiversity loss and climate change, he said conserving natural areas like Lake Ranch are increasingly important, because the lands help sequester carbon, slow down flooding andprovide habitat for pollinators, which are vitalto the agricultural industry.

"Because those habitats are so rare and so endangered,if you're a species that needs a habitat, you tend to be in trouble too," Hamel said. "Any time we can kind of conserve prairies, work with landowners to do that, we're really helping keeping species from blinking out."