Wildlife Networks
 

Wildlife Networks in the Pacific Northwest

 

Press Release: Josh Burnim finishes 800-mile hike for wildlife corridors

The Sawtooths to Selkirks Hike seeks to promote connections, both human and wild - educating people about these places in their backyard, and inspiring people to renew their bonds with the landscapes where they live and to preserve and restore connected wildlife habitats in the Yellowstone to Yukon region.

Central Idaho - drained by the Salmon and Clearwater Rivers - is the largest block of wild country remaining in the U.S. Rockies. Yet, it is an island of habitat. Other nearby but smaller islands are the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, the Selkirks Mountains, and protected areas in British Columbia such as the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy. Conservation Biologists have predicted that if core areas of species habitat are not connected, more species of wildlife, especially large mammals, will over time disappear from these last wild places.

There are a couple basic lessons from Conservation Biology that highlight this.

First, following the movements of collared wolves, wolverines and other mammals with radio telemetry has revealed that they travel much larger distances than we previous knew. They have been observed traveling the large distances between the core habitat areas. Many species of wildlife require large home ranges, such as caribou, grizzlies, wolves, wolverines and lynx. Our existing parks and wilderness areas do not meet these special needs.

Second, when populations are isolated on an island of habitat surrounded by a sea of development, they tend to disappear. Isolation from other populations of a given species leads to inbreeding, and creates a situation where disease and human and natural disturbances can be devastating. A paper by William Newmark, published in the journal Conservation Biology in 1995, reported that 29 mammal populations including the red fox, mink, and river otter have gone extinct from national parks in western North American due to their isolation.

As a result, bold conservation proposals have emerged in the Rocky Mountains (as well as throughout North America) to plan for wildlife networks of core areas of habitat connected by corridors and buffered by transition areas.

The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
"Combining science and stewardship, we seek to ensure that the world-renowned wilderness, wildlife, native plants, and natural processes of the Yellowstone to Yukon region continue to function as an interconnected web of life, capable of supporting all of the natural and human communities that reside within it, for now and for generations."

The Sawtooths to Selkirks Hike was inspired by a two-year, 2100-mile trek by Canadian bear biologist, Karsten Heuer from Yellowstone to Yukon.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR) became one of the first conservation groups to incorporate this vision of connectivity when it first introduced the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) many years ago. Today NREPA continues to increase its support in Congress as well as inspiring projects like the Sawtooths to Selkirks Hike. Visit AWR's Web site to find out more about NREPA

Supporting Conservation Groups

This vision includes healthy populations of wildlife as well as healthy communities. Both are tied together. Healthy communities are grounded in healthy ecosystems. People want to live near wild places. It is part of their quality of life.

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