Expanding passages of preservation through responsible land management and easement acquisition secures habitat for the Bears of Bismark!
The Vital Ground Foundation announced today that it has acquired 57 acres of crucial grizzly bear habitat at North Idaho’s Bismark Meadows.
Located just west of Priest Lake, Bismark Meadows is an 1,100-acre complex of meadows and wetlands that features a dramatic array of rare flora and fauna.
It supports several endangered plant species and provides habitat for moose, elk, deer, black bear, wolves, lynx, westslope cutthroat trout, and eagles, as well as the threatened Selkirk Mountains grizzly population. The project area lies within the Selkirk Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone as delineated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The project protects nearly one quarter mile of Reeder Creek and complements two other projects completed by the organization in 2005 and 2008. The transaction was structured as a bargain sale, with the seller donating a significant portion of the parcel’s value. Vital Ground’s three projects permanently protect more than 160 acres of high value seasonal habitat for grizzlies and other wildlife in an area experiencing mounting development pressures. Efforts at Bismark Meadows fall under the organization’s Selkirk Grizzly Bear Habitat Conservation Initiative, which is designed to help bolster the struggling Selkirk grizzly population by collaborating with private landowners to secure conservation easements and strategic habitat acquisitions.
Research by state and federal agencies indicates that only 50-60 grizzlies persist in the entire 2,200 square mile Selkirk Mountain Ecosystem, which includes portions of northern Idaho, northeastern Washington, and southern British Columbia. Significantly, a senior conservation officer with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game suggests that at least four and as many as eight Selkirk grizzlies have been using Bismark Meadows for foraging habitat during recent spring seasons, including a sow with two cubs and a large boar that were observed in 2009.
“The greatest threat to wildlife today is human intrusion into their habitat,” states Gary Wolfe, Vital Ground’s executive director. “Our conservation projects in Bismark Meadows provide an increasingly rare wild refuge for imperiled animals and plants in a growing sea of development.”
As the surrounding Selkirk Mountains are often snowbound until early June, grizzlies must seek food in lower elevations when they emerge from hibernation. “This makes the meadowlands vitally important for the bears,” Wolfe says. “Without continued access to these and other low elevation food sources in spring and again in autumn, the Selkirk population may fail.”
Vital Ground’s recent project was partially funded by a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation via the Northwest Wildlife Conservation Initiative. NWCI was formed in response to a $7 million, three-year matching grant to The Nature Conservancy from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to protect critical lands in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Additional support was provided by the Richard K. & Shirley S. Hemingway Foundation, First Interstate Bank, First Interstate BancSystem Foundation, and numerous individual donors.
Since 2008 Vital Ground’s work in the Selkirk region has been funded in part by a grant from the Canmore, Alberta-based Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y). Through its partnership with Y2Y, Vital Ground is contributing to the Grizzly Bear Conservation Strategy, an international effort designed to help strengthen ecosystem connectivity so that grizzlies in the Idaho Panhandle and northwestern Montana can move about safely and intermingle with the more robust populations in Canada.
Vital Ground is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working to protect and restore North America’s grizzly bear populations by conserving wildlife habitat. Operating as a land trust, the organization cooperates with private landowners, local communities, state and federal agencies, and other NGOs to protect wildlife habitat resources throughout the northern Rockies.
Since its founding in 1990, Vital Ground has helped to protect and enhance more than 604,000 acres of habitat crucial to grizzly and other wildlife in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska, and British Columbia. For more information, phone 406-549-8650 or visit the website.
If you would like to make a contribution toward future Bismark Meadows projects, click here!
