Today marks World Wetlands Day, prompting the Nature Conservancy of Canada to remind Saskatchewan residents the role that the biome has on the province.

According to the organization, the preservation of the wetlands is a top priority in Saskatchewan, highlighted by climate change.

Information provided in a release by the Nature Conservancy of Canada outlines the roles that the wetlands play in the province. These roles include their ability to absorbing and storing carbon pollution and providing habitats for the species that live there.

Michael Burak, program director of southwest Saskatchewan with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, spoke about how vital the wetlands are.

"They have a ton of different functions that they kind of contribute to keep ecosystems healthy, in some cases they provide habitat for something like 80 per cent of all wildlife species across Canada use wetlands at least for some portion of their life cycle as well, so in addition to all of that, that's kind of why we think their important."

Some Saskatchewanians have also connected the draining of wetlands with increased flooding in the prairies and add complications for cattle producers during calving season. Burak concurs with that statement.

"They tend to act like sponges, or some people say like paper towels even. When we get a really large like flash flood type of rain event, they can absorb and hold a lot of that water back so that its slowly held in these areas and then it slowly trickles into like, cities and more populated areas so its not just this rash of water coming through, its released a lot more slowly than if they were otherwise removed."

Talking about wetlands in the area around Swift Current, Burak said that some pretty contrasting examples exist.

"There's quite a few around Swift Current in general. Just east of Swift Current you've got Reed Lake and Chaplin Lake which are interesting different examples of different types of wetlands. Reed Lake is a bit more of a, I would necessarily call it completely fresh water because it is pretty salty, but its kind of in the middle of the spectrum as far as not being quite freshwater, not quite saline, and then you've got Chaplin Lake further over which is a very salty lake, which is why they mine salt directly out of it."

Burak also said that small patches of water on prairie land also play an important role.

"Those little ones that are kind of scattered across a lot of the pasture land, they do add up in the area pretty quickly, and they do still provide the same type of functions that larger wetlands do, just on a bit of a smaller scale. When you add them all up together, they do have kind of a cumulative impact similar to that of a larger wetland."

The Nature Conservancy of Canada says that is that 64 per cent of the world's wetlands have disappeared since 1900, and that 25 per cent of the worlds current wetlands reside in Canada, a portion of which are located in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Speaking on what is causing the drop in wetlands, Burak said many factors played a role.

"When the province was settled, and agriculture started up, and different things like that, as cities get larger they need more area to take up, so a lot of the wetlands around settled areas are kind of one of the first ones to get converted, and just generally things like invasive species and pollution have kind of crippled wetlands in a lot of areas to the point where they can't do a lot of those functions that they normally would."

Burak said that something people could do to benefit wetlands includes being mindful and reducing your use of things you put down your drains, what you use to fertilizing your lawn, and what you use to salt your driveway.