The Manitoba IBA Program are partners on some exciting projects to deliver incentives to land managers, primarily beef producers, in southwestern Manitoba. These projects are being funded under the auspices of the Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) program ‘Species At Risk Partnerships on Agricultural Land’ or SARPAL.

As part of our contribution to this project, Christian Artuso of Bird Studies Canada carried out monitoring surveys on 32 properties. These properties were located in a target area covering the Southwestern Manitoba Mixed-grass Prairie IBA, Pipestone and Maple Lakes and the western portion of the Oak Lake and Plum Lakes IBA. The intention of these visits was to produce a baseline of bird abundance and presence on these properties, and to provide a list of species for the producer (each were later to receive a 2 sided summary of the results for their property). Close attention was given to Species At Risk (SAR), especially grassland species, such as Sprague’s Pipit, Chestnut-collared Longspur, Baird’s Sparrow, Ferruginous Hawk and Loggerhead Shrike. You can see Christian’s photos of all these species in the mosaic below (all copyright Christian Artuso).

Ferruginous Hawk. Photo copyright Christian Artuso

You can read a summary of the outputs for yourself by downloading the document at the end of this blog, but for a quick summary, here is a summary of Species At Risk recorded during the summer of 2017 by the bird surveys (and a couple of IBA events and volunteers) in these areas.

We would like to thank all our project partners, West Souris River Conservation District, Turtle Mountain Conservation District, Manitoba Beef Producers and Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation. Most of all, thank you to each landowner who kindly gave us permission to survey their property.

To read the report in full,  please download here.

For more information on the SARPAL program, please visit the Keep Grazing webpages on the Manitoba Beef Producers website.