Manitoba’s NDP government is planning to protect five animal and plant species and two ecosystems in the province by putting them under the category of endangered species.

In an effort to protect Manitoba’s few remaining patches of tall grass prairie and the rare limestone plains known as alvars, NDP government of Manitoba has designated them as threatened or endangered.

It has been told that the olive-sided flycatcher, the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat, the Gastony's cliffbrake and the Canada warbler will be declared threatened or endangered under regulatory amendments to the Endangered Species and Ecosystems Act.

The two ecosystems that are designated as endangered are tall grass prairie, which hosts a vast array of grasses, flowers and wildlife, and alvar, a plant community of thin soil over limestone in the Interlake region where a variety of birds, reptiles, mammals and insects live.

Alvars are relatively rare worldwide and look like barren patches of exposed or lightly vegetated limestone.

They are home to a rare combination of prairie plants, mosses, lichens, birds and insects, including some species that don't compete well in lusher ecosystems.

According to the government, Manitoba will be the first province in Canada to designate ecosystem as endangered.

University of Winnipeg bat researcher Craig Willis said, “By protecting ecosystems we protect the habitat for lots of rare and threatened species that occur in those places”.

Cary Hamel, conservation science manager for the Manitoba chapter of the Nature Conservancy of Canada, said in a statement that the province’s decision to declare entire ecosystem endangered sends a message across the world about the importance of preserving interconnected webs of species.

Manitoba is the first political jurisdiction outside New Zealand and Australia to declare ecosystems endangered.