Protection is expanding for grassland in British Columbia's Southern Interior in a conservation area home to as many as 50 at-risk species.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada is closing a gap by expanding a grassland conservation area to 1,350 hectares.

Barb Pryce, the conservancy's Southern Interior program director, says the Sage and Sparrow Conservation Area near Osoyoos will grow by 130 hectares after the purchase.

Most of the land is what's known as dry bunchgrass steppe, an ecosystem unique in Canada, and the new section includes a lake and a mature Douglas fir forest.

Pryce says less than one per cent of B.C. is grassland, but 30 per cent of the province's species at risk depend on that grassland for all or part of their life cycle.

She says some of those species are unique to the grasslands, and not found anywhere else in Canada or the world.

The land was family owned for decades, known as Kit Carr after its original homesteader, and purchased for $750,000 with a combination of federal money and private donations.