Yellowstone to Yukon: wildlife highway becoming a reality

[pmbryant]

From the New York Times:

For Wildlife With Wanderlust, Their Own Highway
A corridor of the wild through the high country of North America - Yellowstone to Yukon - is becoming a reality.

By KIRK JOHNSON

OVANDO, Mont. - Greg Neudecker stopped his truck on a wooden bridge over Monture Creek and stretched out his arm toward the wilderness lands to the north, and Canada beyond that.

"This is the interstate," he said without irony, gesturing to the little stream, maybe 15 feet across. "Everything connects here, from the wild country down into this valley."

A corridor of the wild through the high country of North America - Yellowstone to Yukon - has long been a dream of environmentalists and biologists like Mr. Neudecker, who say that grizzly bears, elk, wolves and other four-legged commuters need help in looking for mates or new habitats. The great national parks of the West, they say, are becoming genetically isolated islands, cut off by development, urbanization and their ever-present iconic symbol, the barbed-wire fence.

But in places like this, on a patchwork of public and private lands, and through a tangle of human motivations that often have little to do with saving the planet, the wild road north along the spine of the northern Rockies is becoming reality.

Conservation and government groups say most of the 150 miles or so from here to the Canadian border, called the Crown of the Continent, is now largely protected through land buying and conservation agreements with private owners. In December the Nature Conservancy of Canada is expected to lock in the northern anchor - 98,000 acres just over the border in British Columbia that a forestry company has agreed to sell.

A result will be the creation of a sheltered land bridge where the animal societies of Canada and the United States can intermingle. Conservationists say linking the two pieces of the wildlife road will be as important for its political symbolism as for the animals that will make their way across - and could become more crucial over time if global warming changes alpine climates, forcing animals to migrate permanently.

(snip)

A better understanding of animal mass transit has in turn allowed a downsizing of ambition about the Crown of the Continent project. The goal is not to create new wilderness or new public parks, say conservationists and wildlife experts like Mr. Neudecker, who works for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, but rather to allow movement of animals through the landscape with the least possible human conflict.

(snip)

Much of the money spent by groups like the Nature Conservancy has gone into the bank accounts of ranchers like Karl Rappold, who has agreed to sell the development rights to most of his land near the town of Dupuyer, about 50 miles from the border. Those contracts mean that Mr. Rappold and his family can continue ranching, but it also means - a crucial point for the wildlife corridor - that the ranch can never be subdivided or developed.

(snip)

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/national/02border.html


Here is the website of the Y2Y: Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

--Peter

[Inland]

1. Nature Conservancy, great group

Buys up property and unlike the US parks, isn't run by a Bush appointee, so you won't find sold for logging at ten bucks an acre.

[joeybee12]

2. Hey, there is actually some good news these days!

Who woulda thought???