Southern Rockies

The focus of Wildsight's Southern Rockies Program is to promote science-based land use management practices throughout the transboundary Crown of the Continent ecoregion and protect a critical connection for wildlife in the Yellowstone To Yukon Corridor.

Currently there are numerous proposals for new and expanded open pit coal mining and vast coalbed methane extraction plans that are threatening to sprawl across and destroy world class wilderness in the Rocky Mountains of south eastern British Columbia.

The five existing coal mines in the Elk Valley are rapidly expanding production as they continue to supply about a fifth of the world's steel-making coal that is shipped by sea.

Expanding industrialization in our unique wilderness has many community members and leaders along with a number of scientists raising questions and concerns about the landscape's capacity to rebound from the cumulative effects of strip mining and gas drilling.

The Solution

Wildsight is working to complete the Waterton-Glacier International Peace by adding the south eastern third of BC’s Flathead River Valley to the protected complex. 

We are also working to establish a Southern Rocky Mountain Wildlife Management Area that would place a priority on wildlife conservation along the spine of the BC Rockies. The Wildlife Management Area is an existing land use designation and it would run from the U.S. border north to the Height of the Rockies and Elk Lakes Provincial parks in the whole of the Flathead and Wigwam River Valleys, a portion of Alexander Creek, the west side of the Elk River Valley and the East side of the Bull River Valley.

Wildsight was recently successful in receiving a commitment from the British Columbia government that there would be no mining or oil and gas permitted in the entire Flathead watershed.  We are now working to ensure the Flathead River Valley stays connected to the protected areas to the north through adequate land use and wildlife management policies and practices.

Please get informed and help us keep this Rocky Mountain jewel wild.

Visit our Flathead Wild website for more details.