Read the stories of Y2Y’s conservation progress and impact in 2025
Y2Y’s 2025 impact report highlights the success of our collaborative efforts last year.
What do you imagine when you think about the Yellowstone to Yukon region? Do you think of towering mountains rising into the sky, dazzling glaciers that provide clean water for millions, musical songbirds singing in the forest canopy, glittering scales in a river, or the the iconic and charismatic grizzly bear?
The Yellowstone to Yukon region is an extraordinary landscape. Protecting a place like this starts with people like you. In 2025, we saw major strides in closing the gap for grizzlies in the southern Rockies, the completion of several vital wildlife crossings, new protections for land throughout the region, and important community coexistence projects.
Impact report highlights
The Yellowstone to Yukon region is extraordinary — protecting a place like this starts with people like you. Thanks to your support, 2025 was a milestone year for conservation across the Yellowstone to Yukon region.
We reconnected fragmented landscapes.
- 204 wildlife crossings (and counting) now spanning busy roads across the region — reducing collisions and connecting critical habitats.
- 45,000 hectares (112,000 acres) of land conserved through a key land purchase in southeast B.C.’s Elk Valley.
- Gaps between grizzly bear populations shrinking, from 240 km (150 miles) to less than 72 km (45 miles) today.
Learn more in pages 6-7 in the report.
We worked with our partners to protect important wildlife habitat.
- Advocated for Indigenous-led conservation in British Columbia, where proposed conservation areas cover an area about the size of Greece.
- Provided expert guidance to Alberta policymakers and regulatory staff on the new All-Seasons Resort Act (ASRA) policy.
- Continued long-standing support of Indigenous-led mountain caribou recovery efforts in the Klinse-Za/Twin Sisters park
Learn more in pages 8-9 in the report.
We collaborated to help wildlife and people live alongside each other.
- Co-hosted two community gatherings that bought together community and Indigenous knowledge and explored coexistence solutions for people and bears.
- Funded a part-time coexistence coordinator to organize local coexistence efforts for farmers and residents.
- Facilitated peer-to-peer learning opportunities to help farmers see effective management tools in action and share their experiences.
Learn more in pages 10-11 in the report.
We brought people, science, and knowledge together for enduring conservation.
- Advanced understanding of how the landscape in the Yellowstone to Yukon region helps naturally regulate the climate.
- Joined more than 200 experts to share knowledge at the first-ever Canadian Ecological Connectivity Conference.
- Played a leadership role in a groundbreaking IUCN report about how large-scale, connected conservation is transforming landscapes and securing a thriving future for nature and people.
Learn more in pages 12-13 in the report.
The Yellowstone to Yukon region is a unique and vital mountain landscape, and protecting it begins with people like you. With your help, Y2Y is building something remarkable.
We span hundreds of communities and a beautiful diversity of perspectives. What unites us is a future where wildlife thrives and people prosper alongside them. Your support will ensure that this important work gets done.
That’s our big tent. There’s always room for more. Thank you for being part of this journey.
Read more stories of impact
From collaboration and science to enduring conservation
Y2Y works to advance conservation by partnering with diverse communities to connect and protect this vast, ever-changing mountain region. To guide our conservation efforts, we draw from the best available information, including from natural and social sciences as well as local and Indigenous knowledge.
Good neighbors: Living with bears
The biodiversity in the Creston Valley, B.C., is unique and thanks to local conservation efforts, still includes grizzly bears. This has created an opportunity for the community to create solutions for how wildlife and people can live alongside each other.
Reconnecting fragmented landscapes
Thanks to your support, Y2Y’s landscape connection team can continue their important work identifying and restoring critical corridors across some of the region’s busiest roads and most important habitat connections.
Helping grizzly bears find their way home
When Y2Y began in 1993, grizzly bear populations in the Yellowstone region had become separated by over 240 kilometers (150 miles) from bears in the Glacier National Park region of Montana and into Canada. Today, the gap between grizzly bear populations in the southern Rockies has shrunk to just 72 kilometers (45 miles).
Room for everyone: Reflections on 2025 from Y2Y President and Chief Scientist, Dr. Jodi Hilty
When I think about what we’ve accomplished together this year, I’m reminded that the most powerful force in conservation isn’t any single policy, paper, or protected area — it’s people coming together around what they love.
