Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

grasslands

Action needed as Canada loses nearly 300 football fields of grasslands daily

Action needed as Canada loses nearly 300 football fields of grasslands daily

Canada’s iconic Prairie grasslands are in peril, but the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) has sprung into action to try to save the vital ecosystems. Its Prairie Grasslands Action Plan proposes to conserve more than 500,000 hectares (more than 5,000 square kilometres) by 2030 —- six times the size of Calgary. In a recent interview with The Weather Network, Jeremy Hogan, NCC's director of prairie grassland conservation, said only 18 per cent of Canada's original grasslands remain. "We have taken the grasslands for granted a little bit. They're one of our most productive ecosystems in terms of food production, but also services like water storage, filtration [and] preventing droughts and floods," said Hogan.

A prairie hot spot for shorebirds is now a conservation site in Sask.

A prairie hot spot for shorebirds is now a conservation site in Sask.

The conservation site, called the Mackie Ranch conservation project, includes a large section of native grassland as well as part of the eastern shoreline of Chaplin Lake, a few kilometres off the Trans-Canada Highway between Moose Jaw and Swift Current, according to the NCC. Grasslands are among the most at-risk ecosystems in the world, according to the national conservation organization. They filter water, help prevent flooding as well as droughts and sequester carbon.

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