The Cabinet-Purcell Wildlife Linkage Initiative is an endeavor by Vital Ground to protect key wildlife corridors and grizzly habitat on private lands in northwestern Montana near the US/Canada border.
The Cabinet-Purcell mountain region is under increasing threat of further habitat fragmentation as a result of human population growth and development, potentially exacerbating existing issues facing the threatened grizzly populations on both sides of the international border. If key habitat and linkage lands here are lost to development, grizzly and other wildlife populations could become too isolated and small to be viable in the long term.
Maintaining landscape connectivity in the area is crucial to genetic interchange between grizzlies in the US and in Canada, where the populations are more robust. With redoubled efforts, it is possible for the grizzly to thrive again.
If the core grizzly populations in the Cabinet-Purcell region can expand in size, it is believed that they will eventually grow in number and disperse and recolonize old territories, including the vast Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem of Central Idaho.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
