The Manitoba government has approved $155,000 in funding to help protect some of the province’s most endangered wildlife species.
The money will be divided between eight conservation agencies involved in monitoring wildlife species or protecting the habitat of endangered animals such as woodland caribou, lake sturgeon and piping plovers.
“The fund provides grants to non-profit community based organizations for projects that will enhance the natural resources of the province,” said Manitoba conservation minister Stan Struthers.
“It encourages organizations to develop local projects that foster better understanding of natural resource issues and the environment.”
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Organizations that will receive funding under the agreement include:
- The Delta Marsh Bird Observatory, which will receive $12,200 to define origins of birds in the boreal forest that migrate through the Delta Marsh area in south-central Manitoba.
- The Saskatchewan River Sturgeon Management Board, which will receive $13,100 for a program to provide long-term population assessment of lake sturgeon in the Saskatchewan River.
- The Portage Natural History Group, which will receive $22,500 to protect nesting sites of the piping plover and determine the survival rates of young birds or fledglings.
Other organizations to receive funding include the Red River Operation Clean Up, the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corp. and the Game Hunting Area 8 Co-operative Moose Management Committee, which will conduct a three-year project to monitor moose populations in the lower Saskatchewan Delta.ÂÂ
Two other groups, the Assiniboine Community College and the Northwest Region Woodland Caribou Management Advisory Committee, will receive a total of $42,000 to monitor populations of the
endangered woodland caribou in the Swan-Pelican watershed area and in the area around Snow Lake, Man.
Ron Campbell, who sits on the Saskatchewan River Sturgeon Management Board, said the funding his group receives through Manitoba Conservation pays for sturgeon netting operations on a 160 kilometre stretch of the Saskatchewan River between the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border and Cedar Lake.
The annual netting operations are critical to estimating the populations of lake sturgeon in the area, he said.
The sturgeon board has received similar funding from Manitoba Conservation for several years, but Campbell said sturgeon board members are hoping to expand netting operations this year so fish numbers can be estimated more accurately.
The sturgeon, a shark-like fresh water species that has survived in Canada for more than 350 million years, was declared at risk of extinction last year by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
The species, which can grow to nearly 200 kilograms and live as long as 150 years, was found to be most at risk in the western portions of its range, between Alberta and northwestern Ontario. Netting operations over the past eight years have seen sturgeon population estimates in Campbell’s study area drop from 7,600 in 1998 to a low of 208 in 2002.
Numbers have rebounded since 2002, but populations are still dangerously low.
“It’s starting to look up again … but we do need to expand (our netting program),” Campbell said.
“We’re always looking for other (funding) sources.”
