The Saskatchewan Prairie Conservation Action Plan spearheads Native Prairie Appreciation Week, which is June 15th to June 21st, to bring awareness to our prairie ecosystem.

Caitlin Meroz-Sailer is the Stewardship Coordinator with SK PCAP and says national prairie ecosystems and grasses are important to highlight because they are an endangered space.

“It’s really easy to forget about that because we hear about saving the coral reefs and the Amazon Rainforest, but we forget about the prairie ecosystem because it’s right in our backyard.”

In Saskatchewan there is less then 13 per cent of native prairie remaining in its original state and that has to do with decades of cultivation, cities getting bigger, roads coming in, climate change and invasive species are also threatening the quality of the habitat.

Meroz-Sailer says their organization is working to protect the remaining prairie in the province and to let people know what native prairie is, because people who have been in Saskatchewan their entire lives may not realize it is its own ecosystem that it is a completely separate from an agricultural crop field.

“We are having conversations and working hard on how to best protect working landscapes.  There’s a lot of people who really depend on the use of prairie for their livelihood, and it’s also important to people for our cultural, spiritual and recreation, so it has a lot of different uses and interest groups.”

You can learn more about Native Prairie Appreciation Week by visiting https://www.pcap-sk.org/upcoming-events/npaw.