A conservation group is pledging to preserve a small wetland for the wildlife that call the western shores of Lake Winnipeg home.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada has purchased 21 hectares of wetland and forest in the rural municipality of Gimli.

The Husavik wetland features a creek, thickets of cattail and other shoreside and aquatic vegetation. It's teeming with biodiversity and an important habitat for a variety of breeding birds and other animals, including at-risk species like the short-eared owl and northern leopard frog, the conservancy said.

A raised sand bar also cuts through the property and supports 1½ hectares of trees, including green ash, maple, bur oak and eastern cottonwood.

Pelicans forage in the shallows of the Husavik wetland on Lake Winnipeg. (Supplied by Nature Conservancy)

Wetlands are considered nature's kidneys due to how they filter out pollutants and excess nutrients from water, helping also to curb the effects of climate change by capturing and storing carbon in the process.

Marshes along the coasts of big lakes in the Interlake are considered to be under "high threat" and no other shorelines in the region are yet protected, the conservancy said.

"Conserving this shoreline property will also ensure that some of the last intact coastal marshes, shorelines and beach ridges in the region are not lost while also conserving associated stream and floodplain areas," the conservancy said in a statement.

The land purchase was supported by the federal and provincial governments, as well as the Richardson Foundation.

This is the 675th Lake Winnipeg conservation project the conservancy has engaged in, covering 149,700 hectares of protected land or an area greater than three times the size of Winnipeg.