A Million Thanks—and Much More Ahead
Dear friend of conservation,
In our day-to-day business, Vital Ground strives to maintain a laser-like focus on active and future projects, rather than dwelling on what the organization accomplished over the past year or decade. Supporters like you may care more about opportunities that lie ahead than past accomplishments, leaning into the challenges you can personally affect through an investment of time, energy or financial support.
But periodically, it’s worthwhile to celebrate collective successes and milestones as a way of expressing gratitude to the volunteers and supporters who make each win for wildlife possible. In addition to celebrating another year of strong conservation progress in 2023 through the publication of our annual report, the organization recently reached two milestones warranting significant appreciation:
- Late in 2023, Vital Ground surpassed 1 million acres of habitat protected or enhanced through the combined products of our own land conservation projects and investments made in partners’ efforts; and
- Through the end of 2023, our Conservation Partners Grant Program has cumulatively disbursed more than $1 million to other nonprofit, agency and local community partners to prevent conflicts between bears and people.
Vital Ground is being propelled beyond those two noteworthy benchmarks by the ongoing One Landscape Initiative, which has now surpassed $27 million in overall impact since its launch in 2019. Your support of the One Landscape Initiative during those five years has resulted in Vital Ground’s completion of 22 conservation easements and land acquisitions benefiting myriad native wildlife species, while simultaneously allowing us to disburse more than 80 individual partner grants to collaborators working to build social tolerance for grizzlies throughout Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
From all of us on Vital Ground’s staff, board and advisory council, heartfelt thanks for carrying the organization to the forefront of grizzly conservation. I invite you to continue scrolling through this report to see where and how your contributions made a positive impact on the ground in grizzly country last year. Here’s to the next million acres!
With deep gratitude,
Ryan Lutey, Executive Director
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2023 Conservation Accomplishments
Your support of Vital Ground made a lasting impact across the Northern Rockies in 2023. You enabled the completion of four key habitat conservation projects and 17 conflict prevention partnerships that helped grizzlies, other wildlife and people share the landscape safely. See the map below for these projects’ geographic context within our larger One Landscape vision and keep scrolling for videos, photos and stories about these wins for wildlife made possible by you.
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Land Protected: Bull River
Vital Ground continued to protect habitat in the most crucial places for long-term grizzly bear connectivity and recovery in 2023. In partnership with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), we completed two more conservation acquisitions in the key Bull River-Clark Fork linkage zone of western Montana. This natural bottleneck area for a rich diversity of wildlife helps connect the Cabinet-Yaak and Bitterroot ecosystems, with the latter still awaiting the return of a resident grizzly population. “Grizzly bear linkage across the Clark Fork River is important for the future of bears in the Bitterroot,” says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Wayne Kasworm. “This project is a start and a stepping stone to protecting habitat for bears to make that journey.” Read more…
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Land Protected: Fowler Creek
The Yaak Valley in Montana’s northwestern corner is rugged, remote country, home to a rich diversity of native wildlife and a small enduring population of grizzlies despite lacking the habitat anchor of a national park or protected wilderness area. With major support from the Wildlife Land Trust, Vital Ground expanded its conservation impact in the Yaak with an addition to our Fowler Creek conservation project. Covering a key portion of the valley bottom along a main Yaak River tributary, these protected forest and wetland acres see regular traffic from bears, wolves, lynx and much more. As the rampant development pressures long seen elsewhere in the state make their way into the Yaak, this key ground will remain open for all things wild. Read more…
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Land Protected: Grave Creek
While biologists estimate that more than 1,000 grizzly bears live in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) in and around Glacier National Park, the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem farther west in Montana is home to just 50-60 grizzlies. Studies have documented very little movement of bears (and the crucial genetic diversity they’d bring) from the NCDE west to the Cabinet-Yaak, but a new Vital Ground conservation easement will ensure key habitat remains undeveloped in one of the main pathways for that movement. In the Grave Creek drainage on the west side of the Whitefish Mountains, we teamed up with conservation-minded landowners to protect these crucial acres—which also provide range for wolves, moose, wolverine, Canada lynx and much more—in a part of the Northern Rockies facing intense development pressures. Read more…
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Land Protected: 100-Acre Wood
The Kootenai River flows west through the northwestern corner of Montana then turns north in the Idaho Panhandle, carving a wide valley on its way into Canada. For over 20 years, Vital Ground has protected key pieces of private land in this valley, helping grizzlies, moose, elk, wolves and much more move between the Selkirk Mountains to the west and the Purcell Mountains to the east. We teamed with Y2Y on the final land acquisition of 2023 in late December, permanently protecting 98 acres just south of the Canadian border in North Idaho. “This particular property’s value to wildlife is two-fold,” says Y2Y’s Senior Connectivity Specialist Eric Greenwell. “Not only does it sit between the Purcells, Cabinets and Selkirks in the larger landscape, it connects National Forest to incredible habitat in the Boundary-Smith Creek Wildlife Management Area and along the Kootenai River.” Read more…
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Conservation Partners: Creating Coexistence from Wyoming to Canada
Vital Ground’s vision of a connected regional landscape for wildlife will only come to fruition if bears and other wide-ranging species can move safely between their wild strongholds. That’s why conflict prevention partnerships form a crucial second prong of our mission alongside habitat protection. From electric fencing and bear-proof garbage across western Montana to bear spray education around Greater Yellowstone, Vital Ground supported 17 local partners performing crucial coexistence work in the communities and across the landscapes of grizzly country last year. Check out our partners page to learn more about each partner and see their names and locations within the larger One Landscape vision via the map below.
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2023 Financial Position
Thanks to the generous contributions of supporters like you, The Vital Ground Foundation ended 2023 in a strong financial position. Public support and revenues totaled $7,053,267.
During this period, 80.01%* of all expenditures was spent on conservation and education programs. Land held for preservation by Vital Ground represented an asset of $11,378,853 as of December 31, 2023.
Vital Ground depends on private contributions to finance our conservation work. As a charitable nonprofit organization, our success depends upon the generous support of our many individual donors, foundations and business partners. Donations to Vital Ground qualify as charitable contributions and may be tax-deductible. Click here to make an online donation today!
* The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance Standards for Charity Accountability suggest that a charity should spend at least 65% of its total expenses on program activities.
Note: The transaction cycle in land conservation can take several years to complete. Consequently, program expense ratios vary significantly from year to year depending on how many transactions are actually finalized during the fiscal year, and the value of donated real estate and conservation easements. Additionally, in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the purchase price of land, which is a significant mission delivery expense for many land trusts, is not included in program expenses, but is recorded as an asset on the organization’s balance sheet. Due to these unpredictable factors and accounting practices, Charity Navigator no longer evaluates land trusts.
In addition to individual supporters and charitable foundations, some of Vital Ground’s most important partners in conservation are companies that align their brands with our conservation mission through Vital Ground’s Business Partners Program. Special thanks to these stalwart 2023 business partners:
- Kodiak
- Montana Coffee Traders
- UDAP
- Grizzly Adams
- Grizzly Broadband
- Hey Bear
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Looking Ahead: Growing the Reach of Your Impact
Your support in 2023 continued Vital Ground’s leadership in wildlife conservation, adding important protected acres and community-led partnerships to the Northern Rockies’ conservation footprint and our One Landscape Initiative. As we approach the 35-year mark an organization, your cumulative contributions to the well-being of grizzlies and entire ecosystems is truly impressive (see graphic at right).
There is much more work to do. The biodiversity loss and climate crises present complex and ongoing challenges for people and wildlife alike. With our work grounded in one of Earth’s most intact wildlife communities, your support of Vital Ground enables tangible progress toward the vision of a connected and resilient bioregion where people and diverse wildlife coexist safely for generations to come.
The pace of that work is rising to meet the urgency of the times. Vital Ground has added capacity, welcoming four new staffers between 2023 and 2024: two new members of our Lands and Conservation program, one in Development and one in Administration and Finance. Your support has enabled these strong additions to our team, which will in turn enable our ability to turn more vital conservation opportunities into protected acres as development pressures remain high across the Northern Rockies.
To that end, Vital Ground is currently pursuing a slate of habitat protection projects that, if completed, will see us conserve more land in the next two years than we have in the last decade and a half. Your ongoing support makes this ambitious goal possible!
Our conservation partners program continues to extend its reach, too. As federal agencies took a major step earlier this year toward returning a grizzly bear population to Washington’s North Cascades Ecosystem, Vital Ground awarded one of its 2024 conflict prevention partner grants to a community-led bear-resistant garbage and electric fencing effort in the Methow Valley on the eastern side of the North Cascades. A full list of this year’s partners will be published online and in our print newsletter this fall.
From Wyoming to Washington, you’re making a big difference on the ground in grizzly country. As we push several important projects toward the finish line in the remaining months of 2024, you enable us to continue leading the way toward a brighter future for grizzlies, countless other wildlife species, and people, too. Thank you!