Meeting Overview

Maintaining the ecological connections, or wildlife movement corridors, between major wildland habitats is one of the most pressing challenges for habitat and wildlife conservation in the Northern Rockies today. American Wildlands is committed to keeping the world-renowned U.S. Northern Rockies ecologically intact by restoring and maintaining connections between key habitats for healthy populations of native wildlife.

To help focus and prioritize our Corridors of Life program work, as well as that of other NGOs and agencies, during 2007 AWL conducted a Priority Linkage Assessment (PLA) to determine the most important habitat connections, or “linkages,” in the U.S. Northern Rockies. This assessment focused on the movement needs of four carnivore species (grizzly bear, wolf, wolverine and lynx) and four ungulate species (elk, moose, bighorn sheep and antelope). In 2008, we will begin working with local conservation interests to develop conservation strategies to address the linkage areas, threats and opportunities identified in the PLA.

On March 20, 2008, American Wildlands hosted a one day meeting, titled “Wildlife Corridors and Ecological Connectivity in the Northern Rockies: Planning, Policy, Partnerships and Practice.” The three primary objectives of that meeting were to [1] promote the use of American Wildlands’ findings to help inform, guide and strengthen the work of others; [2] support and advance state and federal wildlife corridor and connectivity conservation efforts; and [3] catalyze partnerships and implementation strategies to achieve connectivity conservation on the ground.

The content and flow of the meeting included: [1] AWL presenting its findings from the Priority Linkage Assessment; [2] a discussion by six experts on how this information can be valuable to habitat and wildlife conservation efforts relevant to public lands, private lands, transportation, climate change, Western Governors Association’s corridors initiative and the State of Montana’s Corridor Conservation efforts; and [3] As a closing, AWL presenting its ideas for how it will facilitate the use of this information by other conservation partners (NGOs, local community groups, agencies, others), and AWL asking workshop participants for their ideas on how to make the most of this information in three breakout sessions focused on wildlife corridor conservation as it pertained to private lands, public lands, and transportation systems.

This meeting went a long way in supporting the use of AWL’s PLA findings, and in turn, on-the-ground connectivity conservation, in the following ways: [1] created a renewed buzz about the importance of habitat connectivity and wildlife movement corridors within the region’s conservation community; [2] got people interested in learning more about AWL’s finding for their specific area (which will facilitate our strategy and implementation outreach efforts at the linkage level); [3] helped establish buy-in from state and federal agencies to use this data in their planning and management efforts; and [4] provided AWL with a number of ideas for how to make the most of this timely information.