Parks - IUCN

Yellowstone to Yukon:
romantic dream or realistic
vision of the future?
LOUISA WILLCOX AND PETER AENGST
Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) is a bi-national effort to restore and maintain biological
diversity and landscape connectivity along the spine of the North American Rockies,
from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the south to the Mackenzie Mountains in
the north. Encompassing over 1.2 million square kilometres, the Y2Y range is a huge
territory, an ecoregion that hosts not only a rich diversity of wild habitats and creatures,
but also native cultures and rural communities that have been shaped by the power of
the wild. In short, it is geography to challenge our ability to understand it, and to dare
us to create for it a different future than that slated for the tamed and tilled landscapes
of North America.
A central focus of the Y2Y initiative is to establish a system of protected wildlands
designed to maintain connectivity along the 2,000 miles from the Yukon south to the
Red Desert in Wyoming. Ignited about six years ago, the initiative has caught fire in the
imagination of scientists and conservation activists, as well as land managers and
citizens of the region. Today the network includes a diverse array of over 200
conservation groups and individuals in the US and Canada, who support the vision and
are working to ensure the ecological integrity of the wild Rockies.
T
LOUISA WILCOX AND PETER AENGST
HE Y2Y AIMS to restore, maintain, and protect one of the world’s last great
mountain ecosystems. The Rocky Mountains of western Canada and the
northern United States offer some of the most spectacular wilderness in the world,
including some of the best remaining habitat for species eliminated or drastically
reduced in numbers elsewhere. This is particularly true for large carnivores, including
such wide-ranging species as grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines, and lynx, as well as
native fish populations. Such animals, however, face an uncertain future: the forces
that led to their extermination elsewhere – clear cutting, oil and gas development,
mining, hunting, trapping, pest eradication, diversion and damming of rivers,
pollution, subdivision, and suburban sprawl – are mounting here, too.
One of the most significant challenges
is the region’s vast, even mind-boggling,
scale. Those involved in the initiative
face a daunting array of administrative
jurisdictions, each with unique mandates,
fiscal constraints, and cultures. The Y2Y
region includes parts of two countries,
four states, two provinces, two territories,
the reservation or traditional lands of
over 30 Native governments, and a
veritable alphabet soup of government
land agencies. The communities, too,
reflect dramatic differences in socioeconomic
conditions, history, and culture
– from the sparsely populated settlements
17
A hiker stopping to
wash his face in
Dean Lake, Bob
Marshall
Wilderness,
northern Montana.
Photo:
Karsten Heuer.