For Immediate Release September 17, 2003
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LARAMIE, WY -- The Wildlands Project, together with the Wild Utah Project and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, today unveiled the first conservation initiative designed to connect and span the three countries along the “Spine of the Continent” — the Rocky Mountains from northern Mexico to the Yukon in Canada.

This science-based ecosystem framework comes at a time of unprecedented growth of energy development and increasing threats to the health of the land and the viability of local communities. As tens of thousands of new oil and gas wells are being planned for the Rocky Mountain states, indicators of the productivity and health of the land say we are rapidly approaching an ecological crisis. Like a canary in a coalmine, wildlife indicate the health of the land and are reporting a dire situation. The decline in sage grouse is a good example, revealing greater problems to rangeland productivity, water quality, and those dependent on the land. Change is needed not only for wildlife but for the health of the land and ultimately for the continued viability of local communities.

“Conservation biologists now agree that protecting isolated pockets of habitat isn’t enough to ensure the health of ecosystems — the only way to protect them is to practice conservation on a continental scale,” explained Wildlands Project Rocky Mountain Director Jen Clanahan.

The Wildlands Project and local partners mapped the wildlife habitat links that scientists say must be kept functioning to ensure the continued integrity of the ecosystem.

This new blueprint provides important direction for large landscape planning in North America by identifying a 4000-mile connected network of lands that make up the Spine of the Continent “megalinkage” — a grand-scale wildlife corridor.

While there has been broad acceptance of a landscape level to ecosystem management, up to now little progress has been made to develop a working framework to guide the future of lands in the West. Based on the most recent scientific knowledge we have, these conservation groups have responded to a need for this large-scale approach to address the many problems the West faces.

“Our challenge now is to take the theory and set it in motion. And that will only happen by working in partnership with groups on the ground — other conservation groups, land trusts, private landowners, and government agencies. To succeed, we must create networks of people willing to protect these networks of land,” Clanahan stated. The Wildlands Project will begin its conservation campaign by focusing efforts on saving endangered linkages – the most threatened wildlife corridors between protected wildlife areas — and by enlisting and involving communities in this practical and solution-oriented approach.

Research and planning for the Spine of the Continent project has taken more than 10 years and has involved hundreds of scientists, conservationists, private citizens, and outdoor groups, along with local, state and federal agencies.

To promote the effort, the Wildlands Project has produced new maps that detail a combination of lands and wildlife linkages that stretch from the New Mexico Highlands to the Southern Rockies to the Heart of the West region in Wyoming.

Experts identified the Powder Rim, in the southern Red Desert, as the Endangered linkage in this region because it provides essential habitat for sage grouse, desert elk, and other wildlife. This linkage is currently slated for a full-field natural gas drilling project, known as the Desolation Flats project, which would destroy much of the habitat values in the linkage.

“With the western basins under assault from accelerated oil and gas drilling, it is critically important that we engage in long-range planning with a vision for the future,” said Erik Molvar of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “If our ecosystems are allowed to disintegrate, the wildlife that depend on them will vanish as well.”

These conservation blueprints will connect other existing wildlands networks in the Sky Islands of Southern Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico, and the Yellowstone to Yukon conservation initiative.

For more information, see the Wildlands Project website at www.wildlandsproject.org/roomtoroam.