Two Saskatchewan organizations will administer a five-year program designed to conserve habitat for species at risk in the province’s southwest.
The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association will administer the Species at Risk Partnership on Agricultural Lands and has received $2.58 million from Environment and Climate Change Canada to do so.
The South of the Divide Conservation Action Program will work with the SSGA to deliver six different programs to help producers go above and beyond what they already do to provide species at risk habitat, said SODCAP executive director Tom Harrison.
These include results-based conservation agreements, term conservation easements, habitat management agreements, niche product branding, grass-banking, and habitat restoration.
SSGA president Doug Gillespie said ranchers have always known that if they are good to the land, the land will be good to them.
The area in which the programs will be delivered is home to 13 species at risk that wouldn’t be there without already good stewardship, he said.
This voluntary program will help them develop new and better ways to protect habitat.
Contact karen.briere@producer.com
