Wetland conservation continues to be a pressing issue as wetlands continue to be lost due to urban, industrial, and agricultural expansion. This paper synthesizes the current knowledge about wetland conservation economics in Canada, with a focus on prairie landscapes. We review the methods economists use to empirically measure the costs (i.e., supply) and benefits (i.e., demand) of wetlands and their ecosystem services. We find a wide range of wetland conservation cost estimates both across studies and across wetlands suggesting an important role for targeting. For the benefits side, we outline the wetland ecosystem service conceptual framework, describe the main approaches used in wetland benefit valuation, and review the sparse empirical evidence. The paper concludes with a call for more careful empirical evidence demonstrating the economic benefits of wetlands that can be compared to conservation costs operationalized into policies.