Kootenay Connect: Ecological Corridors in the Kootenays

A Special Edition Webinar co-hosted by KCP and the BC Chapter of The Wildlife Society Original Air Date: June 10th 2020 Kootenay Connect is a regional conservation initiative designed to enhance, restore, recognize, and establish landscape level Ecological Corridors focused on riparian-wetland complexes and the wildlife that use them. These complexes are our area’s biodiversity hotspots, climate refugia, and arenas for connecting mountainous upland habitats across our human-dominated valley bottoms in the Kootenay region of southeast BC. They encompass both public and private lands. It was patterend after work in the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area that identified and conserved connectivity corridors that benefited both grizzly bears and the threatened northern leopard frog – now referred to as the Frog-Bear Conservation Area. We’ve expanded this concept to include 12 similar corridors across the Kootenays, and are currently funded for 3 years by the Columbia Basin Fish Wildlife Compens