Our Work
Creating a Climate Refuge Lifeboat
From cutting-edge forest science to the songs of the Black Ram Guitar, every part of our work serves a single goal — permanent protection for the Black Ram region of northwestern Montana's Yaak Valley.
What Is a Climate Refuge?
A place dedicated to storing the maximum amount of carbon in old and mature forests — while serving as a focal point for scientific and artistic inquiry into how climate change affects sensitive species, including our own.
These places are climatically special — staying cooler and wetter even as the American West grows hotter and drier. Scientists call them refugia: climate lifeboats where wildlife can persist, adapt, and migrate.
The Yaak & Forest Refuge Alliance
A Singular Land of Extremes and Dualities
Perched on the seam of British Columbia, Idaho, and Montana, the Yaak is a mythical land lying between the lush Pacific Northwest and the fire-and-ice landscapes of the Northern Rockies. From the state's lowest point — roughly 1,800 feet at the mouth of the Yaak River — to peaks near 8,000 feet, this range creates extraordinary biodiversity.
In every sense, the watershed is a refuge. Forest Refuge Alliance is working to designate the most northwestern corner of Montana's Yaak Valley as the nation's first Climate Refuge — because despite being roughly 97% public land, the Yaak has no permanent protection today.
Wildlife of the Yaak
Species This Refuge Would Protect
The Yaak holds great gray owls, salamanders, wolverine, bull trout, and — cornerstone for it all — Montana's most imperiled population of grizzly bears.
Cornerstone Species
The Grizzly Bear
A keystone species whose presence lifts all others — but the Yaak's grizzlies are identified by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as the least resilient in the country, with a ten-year average of just 3.2 females-with-cubs each year.
The Yaak is a climate lifeboat — and the last Yaak grizzlies are in it.
Canada Lynx
A snow-country hunter that depends on the cool, deep-winter forests the Yaak still provides.
Pine Marten
An old-growth specialist that thrives among the standing dead wood of ancient stands.
American Pika
A tiny climate sentinel, among the first to feel the West's warming summers.
Bull Trout
The iconic native bull trout depend on pristine, cold, clean, and connected waterways to survive and spawn.
Coeur d'Alene Salamander
These salamanders are cold-adapted and require constantly moist environments like waterfalls and seeps.
Wolverine
A female wolverine burrows deep into snowpack to make her den and needs it to last 9-10 weeks in order to wean her kits.
The Black Ram
An Ancient Rainforest, Nearly Clearcut
The Black Ram region takes its name from an ill-planned timber project that would have clearcut hundreds of acres across the 95,000-acre Black Ram Geographic Area — the wettest, most remote section of the valley. Enormous old larch, cedar, hemlock, spruce, and subalpine fir would have been lost.
Many are primary forests — never logged, showing no signs of recent fire. Their secrets hold valuable knowledge about how this forest has survived earlier cycles of climate change.
The Refuge Campaign
A Green Curtain, Beginning in the Yaak
Old sub-boreal forests store vast tonnages of carbon — and old trees take it up faster than young ones. We envision this Refuge as the first in a series of designations that could form a "Green Curtain," eventually encircling the Earth at northern latitudes.
Science
Commissioning the Research
We help fund cutting-edge studies into the old forest's complex mysteries — documenting what remains before it's gone, so the science can lead the case for protection.
Art
Bringing Artists to the Forest
We bring painters, poets, musicians, and filmmakers into the ancient forest to experience and celebrate it — and to carry its story back out into the world.
Centerpiece of the Arts Campaign
The Black Ram Guitar
Sourced from an ancient Engelmann spruce damaged in a logging operation at the edge of the old forest, the guitar travels to music festivals across the country each year — played by artists who carry the Yaak's story forward in song.
A Climate Refuge in the Yaak is a made-in-Montana solution — powered by poetry, science, and song.
