A wolf’s astonishing journey has become the catalyst for more than 30 years of conservation collaboration between Canada and the US.
In 1991, a wolf named Pluie was collared with a satellite tracker near Alberta’s Banff National Park. Over the next two years, she would cover 100,000 square kilometers, crossing three American states and two Canadian provinces. Her journey stunned researchers and raised important questions about large mammal movements. Was this unique, or had Pluie revealed the extraordinary lengths some animals travel when they have the freedom and room to roam?
Corridors not islands
Around the time of Pluie’s journey, the concept of landscape-scale conservation was beginning to take hold, borne from a growing realization that national parks and islands of protected areas were not enough to support thriving wildlife populations. Wild animals need space to den, find food and connect with mates to ensure genetic diversity. They don’t recognize boundaries, so linked protected areas are essential to support healthy populations.
A vision for connection
Harvey Locke, an environmental lawyer, was at the forefront of these conversations in the early 1990s. He saw an opportunity to create a linked pathway of protected land and prime habitat from Yellowstone to the Yukon, along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, the rugged backbone of North America: around 3,400 kilometers (2,100 miles) of one of the world’s last true wildernesses. During a two-week trip into the wilderness of northern British Columbia, he sketched out a vision on the back of a map, and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) was born.
By December of that year, he had convened 30 scientists and conservationists from both sides of the border, to discuss how to give nature the space it needs to flourish naturally.
The work would not be easy. The Yellowstone to Yukon region was under threat from unprecedented human and environmental pressures, including habitat destruction, climate change, and overhunting. In 1993, only 11 per cent of the lands and waters within the region were officially protected. Early critics felt the Y2Y vision was too ambitious and lacked a clear focus and ability to implement effective solutions.
“It doesn’t lack ambition, that’s for sure, but it’s more feasible than it might appear. This is the kind of conservation we need if the world is to continue functioning in the way we know it to be.” — Dr. Harvey Locke, Founder, Y2Y
A bold adventure for a bold idea
In the early days, Locke’s vision was met with skepticism. The scale seemed too big, the idea too ambitious.
To prove that nothing is impossible, and to inspire belief in the Yellowstone to Yukon dream, the nascent organization sponsored a young wildlife biologist, Karsten Heuer in an equally ambitious goal. He wanted to walk in the footsteps of the wildlife he sought to protect, traversing the entire Yellowstone to Yukon region over 18 months with his dog Webster.
After a 3,400-kilometre (2,100 mile) journey, Heuer had the answer he needed. He recorded signs and sightings of grizzly bears more than 85 per cent of the route, providing an insight into just how ecologically intact the landscape was.
Heuer went on to become president of Y2Y, determined to give species everything they need to thrive, should they undertake a journey similar to his own.
Since then, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, now in its 31st year, has become a blueprint for collaboratively addressing the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate breakdown. A network that melds Indigenous knowledges with field study and insights from western science, to provide what Pluie showed was required: protection at the scale nature needs.
Connected, protected and restored
Over its 30-year history, Y2Y has become a respected conservation model, inspiring similar large-scale initiatives like Algonquin to Adirondacks and Baja to Bering. This is in part due to efforts to bridge international boundaries as well as political and ideological ones.
The Initiative’s growing team has worked tirelessly to collaborate with local, regional and national governments, landholders, Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and other partners bringing them together around shared conservation priorities.
As a result, protected areas in the region have increased by more than 80 per cent, including new Indigenous-led protected areas in British Columbia, Northwest Territories, and the Yukon, the creation of dedicated wilderness zones in the United States and a new provincial park in southern Alberta. The average size of new protected areas has increased by 56 per cent, and at least a quarter of the Yellowstone to Yukon region is now under the formal stewardship of Indigenous Peoples.
Beyond securing new land protections, Y2Y has advocated for wildlife crossings — 177 now exist in the region with 50 more committed to by governments to the years ahead.
The Initiative’s staff have also developed programs that support communities to coexist safely with wildlife, worked with willing property owners to conserve more than 500,000 acres of private land in key wildlife linkage areas and restored hundreds of acres of lands and waters to increase available wildlife habitat.
Thanks to the efforts of Y2Y and its many partners and collaborators to identify, protect and restore corridors in northern Montana, the Cabinet Yaak grizzly bear population has grown from 10 bears in 1990 to around 60 today. And grizzly bears from the Canada border area are now close to reconnecting with the long-isolated bears in the Greater Yellowstone area.
Restoring and reconnecting bear populations and other wildlife helps ensure genetic diversity and continued breeding opportunities.
While mountain caribou populations have been diminishing across their ranges, thanks to Indigenous leadership, mountain caribou numbers have tripled across one area of eastern British Columbia, the Peace River region. In 2013, only 38 individuals remained in the Klinse-za caribou herd, and today the populations numbers almost 200, well on its way to recovery.
Harvey Locke’s ambitious vision has not only been proven possible but has led to thriving, collaborative networks of different groups advancing conservation across the vast Yellowstone to Yukon region. This vision has also led to credible and effective government policies and inspired similar large-scale conservation movements around the world. More than 420 scientific papers and books now reference the initiative and further reinforce large landscape conservation as this century’s approach to conservation.
Looking to the future
At the end of 2022 in Montreal, 196 countries adopted the Global Biodiversity Framework, an ambitious agreement to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.
After 30 years of large-scale conservation efforts, the Y2Y initiative knows something about ambition. The team looks forward to being a contributing partner in the efforts to ensure permanent protected spaces can grow and contribute to the 30×30 target. In fact, Y2Y is thinking even bigger:
“ We see a future where the Y2Y region is admired around the world, with a cause that resonates with people from all walks of life … By 2055, almost half of the region could be protected, with a robust connectivity that will help to halt and reverse biodiversity loss from Yellowstone to the Yukon and beyond, ensuring ecologically abundant spaces that support wildlife, and enrich the human experience.”
— Jodi Hilty, Ph.D., President & Chief Scientist, Y2Y
A 2024 study assessing the great mountain ranges of the world for ecological intactness found the Rocky Mountains to be the most undisturbed, and therefore wild, on Earth. Y2Y’s mission is to keep it that way; a vision embraced with more than 700 partners, and thousands of supporters across 84 countries.
And after 31 years, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative is just getting started.
