Manitoba Tall Grass Prairie Preserve: Providing Habitat for Protected and Provincially Rare Species

Authors

Christie L. Borkowsky, Critical Wildlife Habitat ProgramFollow

Date of this Version

8-2014

Document Type

Article

Citation

Proceedings of the 23rd North American Prairie Conference, August 2012, University of Manitoba in Winnipeg

The Prairie Naturalist 46: 126-127. August 2014

Comments

Published by the Great Plains Natural Science Society, 2014. Used by permission.

Abstract

The establishment of the Manitoba Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in 1989 secured some of the largest and highest quality parcels of tall grass prairie remaining in the province. Shortly after securement by either Nature Manitoba (formerly Manitoba Naturalists Society) or Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation, seasonal staff from the Critical Wildlife Habitat Program (CWHP) began inventory efforts to document the various floral and faunal species occurring on these acquisitions. With the addition of the Nature Conservancy of Canada to the Preserve partnership, the Preserve has grown in size to nearly 5,000 ha. The list of species identified on the Preserve has also increased. To date, over 900 species have been documented for the area, several of which are considered rare and have been listed under the federal Species At Risk Act (SARA), the Manitoba Endangered Species Act (MB-ESA) and in a few cases, both acts. The Preserve also provides habitat for many provincially rare species, some of which have very limited distributions (Manitoba Conservation Data Centre 2012). Rarity of a species is assessed and assigned a provincial conservation status rank known as the S-rank (Manitoba Conservation Data Centre 2012).