The Hub Conservation Area - Montanans 4 Safe Wildlife Passage

IntroductionMaintaining the ecological connections, orwildlife movement corridors, between majorwildland habitats is one of the most pressingchallenges for habitat and wildlife conservationin the Northern Rockies today. The designationof national parks, refuges, wilderness, androadless areas—without conserving the habitatthat ties them together—creates a series ofcore habitat “islands.” These islands of habitatmay eventually lead to extinction for residentwildlife because of negative influences commonamong small, isolated populations of wildlife—inbreeding, outbreaks of disease, the effects ofnatural disasters, and the inability of wildlife tore-colonize an area.American WildlandsCorridors of Life ProgramOverviewAmerican Wildlands’ Corridors of Life programfocuses on keeping these large protected areas—the core habitats-–ecologically connected withinthe U.S. Northern Rockies. American Wildlands(AWL) works to restore and maintain the wildlifemovement corridors between these protectedcore habitats for the benefit of wide-ranging ormigratory animals. Our work is the ecologicallynecessarycomplement to the work of local,state, regional and national conservation groupsthat focus on conserving the large core habitatsof this region.American Wildlands addresses habitatconnectivity at both the regional scale and atthe more localized landscape level (addressingthe need of wildlife to be able to move aboutwithin these regional corridors). The regionalcontext addresses the needs of wide-rangingspecies such as grizzly bear, wolf, lynx andwolverine, while the landscape contextaddresses wildlife whose movement needsare more localized such as elk, moose, andbighorn sheep.More than a decade ago, AWL literally putwildlife corridors in the Northern Rockies ona map with the development of a least costpath model developed by Dr. Lance Craigheadand Richard Walker (Figure 1). The modelshown below in Figure 1, identified the areasmost likely to provide connectivity for forestcarnivores. For the past decade, AmericanWildlands used this model to focus ourconservation activities; however, much haschanged in the Northern Rockies landscape inthe past decade, and an update to the originalCorridors model was needed, so the PriorityLinkage Assessment was born.American WildlandsCabinet -PurcellsEcosystemLewiston!Coeur d'Alene!Corridors of LifeSalmon - SelwayEcosystemCore AreasHigh Qual. CorridorsBoise´!0 20 40 Kilometers0 20 40 MilesLow Qual. CorridorsCorridors of Life Program1Kalispell!2Missoula!Crownof theContinentEcosystemButte!Pocatello!Helena!Idaho Falls!Bear River RangeBearLakeGreat Falls!Bozeman!GreaterYellowstoneEcosystemAlpine!Jackson!Protecting Habitat Connectivity for Wildlifein the U.S. Northern Rockies4Regional Conservation Corridors Area1. Cabinet- Purcells2. Crown of the Continent3. The Hub4. The High DivideFigure 1. 1995 Walker and Craighead Corridors model(most recently updated in 2006).3Cody!Lander!18