The report, Manitoba's Blue Mosaic, ranks the province's water and wetlands as among the most ecologically significant in the world. It says Manitoba is one of the few jurisdictions where large-scale conservation of those resources remains possible.

"Manitoba is really special among Canadian provinces. Although people think of it as a prairie province, it has one of the largest boreal forest areas in Canada, and one of the most intact boreal forest ecosystems," said Jeff Wells , science and policy director with the Boreal Songbird Initiative and a co-author of the report.

"And it is all interconnected via water. The Manitoba boreal is dense with wetlands—rivers, lakes, ponds, bogs, marshes, and peatlands—that support a vast amount of wildlife and provide incredible services to the environment. It's just this massive living system," Wells said.

Manitoba's Blue Mosaic details how water is the thread connecting Manitobans to a boreal realm that—at 570,000 square kilometres (140 million acres)—is daunting in scale.

View June 2014 Ducks Unlimited and Boreal Songbird Initiative report
View June 16, 2014 Winnipeg Sun article
View June 16, 2014 Yahoo! Finance article
View Winnipeg Realtor's article