Yellowstone to Yukon
One of CPAWS’ National Programs is the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) program. This landscape scale vision is a network of core protected areas combined with an interconnected series of wildlife corridors running 3,200 km up the Rocky Mountains from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming to northern Yukon. CPAWS’ long-term conservation vision for this region is to ensure a wide corridor of connected conservation areas in the Canadian portion of the Y2Y corridor.
This program highlights one of the major national conservation themes for CPAWS – landscape connectivity. Our work in this area has focused on three key areas of the region: the Peel Watershed in the Yukon, the Flathead Valley in BC, and the Castle Special Place in Alberta.
Our efforts to protect these three sites are starting to pay off. The Flathead campaign is now an international campaign with UNESCO interest and explicit conservation desires articulated by the state of Montana. The campaign to protect the Yukon’s Peel Watershed has significant public support within the Yukon, and the final Peel land use planning commission report is recommending protection of 80% of the watershed. The Castle Special Place has broad-based local support for protection, and we are working diligently to move forward a recommendation for a combination Wildland and Provincial Park.
The Southern Alberta chapter of CPAWS is currently serving as Chair for the Y2Y multi-chapter committee that also involves our BC, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Northern Alberta chapters. Together, we are working to increase the extent of protected areas in this internationally significant landscape. CPAWS Southern Alberta’s work largely focuses on the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem within the Y2Y corridor.
The Crown of the Continent
The Crown of the Continent Ecosystem (the Crown) is a remarkable and wild landscape located in southern British Columbia, Alberta, and northern Montana. This region is globally significant for wildlife habitat and clean, abundant water. The area is also characterized by rural communities and First Nations who share a deep respect for the landscape and its natural processes. Recognizing the global significance of the Crown, the Continent Conservation Initiative (CCCI) was created by dozens of organizations active throughout the region to articulate and advance a long-term conservation vision. The vision is to sustain far into the future the Crown’s rich biodiversity of plant and animal life, interconnected wildlands, cold, clean waters, diverse and critical habitats, and landscape connectivity, while supporting sustainable and vibrant regional communities. |
The CCCI is comprised of U.S. and Canadian organizations working to implement a Conservation Plan and Agenda to realize the collective conservation vision. CCCI Steering Committee members include The Nature Conservancy Montana, Wildsight, University of Montana Environmental Studies Program and Flathead Biological Station, Miistakis Institute of the Rockies, The Wilderness Society, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, National Wildlife Federation, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, Nature Conservancy of Canada, American Wildlands, Wildlife Conservation Society, National Parks Conservation Association, Heart of the Rockies Initiative, and Wilburforce Foundation. CPAWS SAB is a part of the CCCI and represents CPAWS BC and our National chapter.
These organizations have combined their expertise, resources, capacities and strategies to seize this moment of challenge and opportunity and to accelerate and intensify the scope and scale of conservation in the Crown. This effort builds on an extraordinary legacy of conservation progress and success in the region and reflects a significant investment of resources and capacity in the Crown made by myriad foundations, private donors, and the public.
The Crown of the Continent
.jpg)
The 72,843 km2 (18 million acres) region where Montana, British Columbia and Alberta converge is known as the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem. Situated in the heart of the Yellowstone to Yukon region, the Crown has been described as one of the premier mountain eco-regions of the world. It contains some of the largest remaining blocks of intact wildlands in North America. The Crown is a remarkable assemblage of high peaks, aspen glades, dense conifer forests, clear-flowing rivers and native grasslands. Due to this exceptional diversity of habitat types and elevation gradients, the Crown has been touted as one of the best landscapes to help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Habitat diversity, a strong core of protected areas in the US, and complimenting native species afford the wildlife and plants of the Crown options to adapt to a changing climate. In addition, the Crown is a water tower for much of southern Alberta, Montana, and BC. Maintaining the integrity of these headwaters is integral to tempering the effects of climate change within the context of water quality and quantity for human communities.
The region’s exceptional features include the following:
(1) the Crown is one of the largest, most intact wildland ecosystems in North America, and thus one of the most promising opportunities to achieve landscape scale conservation;
(2) being strategically situated in a transition zone between continental and pacific maritime climates accounts for the Crown’s high levels of biodiversity, including 1,200 species of vascular plants, more than 300 bird species, 65 species of native mammals, and a number of rare and endemic species;
(3) nearly all of North America’s large mammals are found in the Crown, including a portion of Alberta’s threatened grizzly bear population. In addition to the grizzly, the region hosts the full complement of North American predators, including grey wolf, mountain lion, black bear, wolverine, bobcat, Canadian lynx, fisher and marten, relying on abundant populations of elk, deer, moose and pronghorn and other prey species;
(4) large expanses of public lands dominate the Crown landscape, including internationally heralded places such as Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Montana. At a landscape scale, the Crown of the Continent links the Canadian Rockies with vast wilderness and wildland areas in the western U.S., including the Greater Yellowstone and Salmon Selway Ecosystems to the south and the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystems to the west.
Scientists have determined that the Crown is among only a handful of places in the world that appears to have entirely escaped post-industrial extinctions.
The Crown and Climate Change
The Crown’s location and features make it ideally suited to survive the most severe impacts of climate change and to become an international model for climate change adaptation and resilience. Still, climate change has been recognized as the overarching and most serious conservation challenge facing the Crown today. The Crown also faces a number of other serious threats, including mining and energy development, increased recreational uses and pressures, burgeoning subdivision and unplanned growth, and fragmented and uncoordinated management and stewardship, resulting in significant impacts to key species and critical habitat. The Crown of the Continent Ecosystem contains a strong core of protected areas in the US, but that core of protected areas come abruptly to an end a little north of the international border. In Canada, the only protected areas in the Crown are Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and the BC provincial park Akamina-Kishinena. CPAWS SAB is working hard to change this. By protecting the Castle (north of Waterton) and the Flathead River Valley (in BC, west of Waterton), we can increase this core of protected areas. This protection will help temper the impact of climate change we experience in southern Alberta and BC, as well as provide wilderness recreational opportunities, improved core grizzly habitat, and a secure water supply.
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
In 1993, CPAWS worked with other groups to create the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative – an international network of groups and individuals working together to maintain and restore the unique natural heritage of the Y2Y region and the quality of life it affords to residents and visitors.
Today, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative is a robust organization working towards achieving this ambitious landscape scale vision. Combining science and stewardship, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative seeks to ensure that the world-renowned wilderness, wildlife, native plants and natural processes of the Y2Y region continue to function as an interconnected web of life, capable of supporting all of its inhabitants and human communities, for now and for future generations.
In a landscape so diverse and which faces so many urgent challenges, cooperation is the key to securing a healthy and sustainable environment for people and wildlife. The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative has engaged a broad partner network consisting of over 300 organizations to work towards its large scale vision. CPAWS is an active partner of the Y2Y network and works closely with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.
Home | Campaigns | News | Education | Events | Take Action | Links | Support | Search
Questions about CPAWS Southern Alberta? E-mail info@cpawscalgary.org
Comments on this Web site? E-mail webmaster@cpawscalgary.org