Yellowstone to Yukon bill makes the first move

OLYMPIA – A bill designed to promote the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative was successfully passed today from the Senate to the House. The purpose of Y2Y is to define and designate a life-sustaining network of wildlife cores, movement corridors and transition areas throughout the Y2Y ecoregion which stretches from the Mackenzie Mountains in the Yukon and Northwest Territories to the southern end of the Wind River range on the border of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

Sen. Ken Jacobsen, D-Seattle, sponsored Senate Bill 5318 which asks the Department of Fish and Wildlife to participate with other wildlife management agencies and conservation organizations to work towards identifying priority species, habitats, or landscapes lying within Washington.

“The Seattle area is a philanthropic leader for the Y2Y region contributing $10 million over 10 years which tells me Washington residents support this conservation effort,” said Jacobsen. “We need to protect our wild places because they are decreasing, not increasing. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

SB 5318 helps support the Y2Y mission of combining science and stewardship, in an effort to ensure that the world-renowned wilderness, wildlife, native plants, and natural processes of the Yellowstone to Yukon region continue to function as an interconnected web of life, capable of supporting all of its natural and human communities, for current and future generations.

map (Power Point file)

Return to Sen. Jacobsen's home page