Saskatchewan stakeholders are forming an invasive species council to focus attention on plants and animals that threaten to take over their environment.
While it will have a plant focus, organizer Chet Neufeld, executive director of the Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan, said there are insects and animals that might cause problems as well, hence the decision to use the word species.
Alberta and British Columbia have invasive plant councils and Manitoba is a few steps ahead of Saskatchewan in setting one up, Neufeld said.
More than 20 organizations in Saskatchewan are involved, including representatives from governments, First Nations, and environmental and agricultural organizations.
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The work so far has focused on how to proceed and how the council would operate.
Neufeld said the stakeholders found some redundancy in how they were approaching some problems.
“There’s co-operation out there but if you asked, stakeholders didn’t know what others were doing,” he said.
The council will provide a forum to communicate successes and failures and identify new areas or species of concern. Working together will be more efficient and less expensive, Neufeld said.
The council’s action plan should be finalized this summer. Federal funding runs out March 31, 2009.
“We’re looking at getting industry funding and maybe a corporate membership fee,” Neufeld said. “We need enough to keep a co-ordinator hired and do the day-to-day work and maintain a website.”
Harvey Anderson, group planning adviser for the Invasive Alien Plant Program in the province, said involving major landowners such as Saskatchewan’s highways and agriculture departments, SaskPower and First Nations is key.
For example, three reserves, Beardy’s and Okemasis near Duck Lake and Cowessess near Broadview, are “very much struggling with leafy spurge.”
Anderson said the council must also focus on educating people to recognize invasive species and offer advice on how to deal with them.
