How each of us can help protect biodiversity as the Prairies warm

CBC Alberta and Saskatchewan have teamed up for a new pilot series on weather and climate change on the Prairies. Meteorologist Christy Climenhaga will bring her expert voice to the conversation to help explain weather phenomena and climate change and how it impacts everyday life.

As the Prairies warm, it's expected large regions of boreal forest could transition to aspen parkland, according to a report led by Natural Resources Canada.

Such shifts in ecosystems can threaten the range and number of wildlife species.

Biodiversity is crucial, says Sheila Colla, a conservation scientist at York University. 

"Biodiversity provides us with ecosystem services like pollination, natural pest control, water purification, soil nutrient cycling, that kind of thing," Colla says. 

Those natural activities, which happen without us thinking about them, would be hard and expensive to replicate. 

A greater diversity of wildlife can itself play a significant role in combatting the effects of climate change. 

"Having more diversity in our system makes that system more resilient to disturbance," Colla says.  

"If you're in an area where there's a drought in the summertime or a spring storm where everything blooms and then freezes, and you're relying on one or two species of bees for pollination, their colonies might be killed," she says.

Canada has 865 species of native bees, which is helpful during those extreme weather disturbances.

With more species out at different times of the year, Colla says, pollination is more successful.

Native plants, too, can help combat climate change when they are left to their own devices.

"A lot of them are more drought tolerant and they have longer root systems, so they capture carbon in addition to all of the other benefits that they provide," she says.

Native species also rely on each other and removing one will likely endanger another.