Sauder Reservoir is SEAWA's most remote site, located on the north shore of Sauder Reservoir (Rattlesnake Lake) approximately 35 km West of Medicine Hat. The project on this site is in partnership with the Saint Mary River Irrigation District (SMRID), with access to the site being through land operated by the Winnifred Hutterite Colony. Operations on site began in 2018 with a fencing project funded through Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Recreational Fisheries Conservation Partnerships Program (RFCPP), and was followed by the planting of over 150 shrubs. An additional 60 shrubs were planted in 2020 as part of an experiment testing the effectiveness of different browsing prevention methods on native shrubs.
Shrub species planted on this site include:
- chokecherry (Prunus virginiana)
- wolf willow / silverberry (Elaeagnus commutata)
- thorny buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea)
- Saskatoon (Amelanchier alnifolia)
- golden currant (Ribes aureum)
- red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea)
- western snowberry (Symphoricarpos occidentalis)
- sandbar willow (Salix exigua)

Wildlife
The Sauder site probably has the most wildlife of any SEAWA site. The proximity to a large water body, paired with the remoteness of the site make it home to an enormous variety of rodents, frogs, snakes, birds, insects, arachnids, and some larger mammals. SEAWA staff have been very excited (but a little frightened) to have close interactions with animals like rattlesnakes and bull snakes. The site is a favourite of SEAWA's bird loving staff, due to the mix of prairie birds, waterfowl, and shorebirds on site. There are frequently feathery friends to be found
It is worth noting that Sauder site is also home to a huge number of native plant species, including great basin calico-flower (Downingia laeta), a rare plant in Alberta!
Applied Research: Browsing Prevention
In 2020, an experiment was started at Sauder to test the effectiveness of different combinations of browsing prevention methods by deer. Chokecherry, Saskatoon, thorny buffaloberry, and red osier dogwood were the species of shrubs selected for this experiment, as they have varying palatability to deer. For each species there were control plants with no prevention methods used on them, caged plants, plants sprayed with deer repellant, and plants that had both cages and deer repellant. The first season results for this experiment unfortunately were not viable, due to hail damage to the plants making it difficult to determine the amount of browsing that took place. The experiment will continue in future.
Challenges
This site has a host of challenges associated with it. The biggest and most difficult to deal with is the nearly constant wind. Due to the elevation and the lack of shelter on site, the wind is usually quite strong. This can be detrimental to SEAWA shrubs because any water added to the soil evaporates very quickly when direct summer sun and strong wind are paired. To combat this, shrubs at this location are surrounded with debris such as palettes, mulch, old fenceposts, and cattle bones found on site in an attempt to hold moisture in the soil. This can also be very useful to trap snow around the shrubs for extra water when it melts.
Another challenge of working at the Sauder site is water level. Because it is a reservoir used for irrigation, the water level on site is highly variable. In the spring it can be quite high, flooding some areas of the site, while in the middle of summer and again in the fall it is often much lower, making water collection difficult. These fluctuations change from year to year, depending on water demand for irrigation, but are more significant during drought years.