Bridging crucial gaps for wildlife, thanks to you!
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 achieved in the past. Supporters like you likely 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 review just how significantly your support has moved the needle, both for Vital Ground as an organization and for grizzlies as a species recovering from the brink of extinction in the Lower 48. Last year, Vital Ground’s land conservation projects protected habitat in crucial connectivity areas that help link the Northern Continental Divide, Bitterroot and Cabinet-Yaak ecosystems in western Montana. With a rise in documented grizzly movement between these ecosystems over the past decade—as well as recent biological reports showing the range of these northern populations within about 40 miles of connection with the species’ isolated southern stronghold in Greater Yellowstone—the vision of a connected, genetically-resilient regional grizzly population is no longer just a pipedream.
Vital Ground has directly protected more than 60 key pieces of private land from subdivision and development to help bridge these gaps between the region’s wild cores of public land. By the end of 2024 our Conservation Partners Grant Program had cumulatively disbursed well north of $1 million to other nonprofit, agency and local community partners to prevent conflicts between bears and people. Through both prongs of our mission, supporters like you have made a highly tangible and lasting contribution to the grizzly’s inspiring and ongoing recovery story in the Lower 48. What’s more, the Great Bear’s role as a conservation umbrella species means you’ve also supported the recovery of numerous other sensitive species, from Canada lynx and wolverine to native trout, migratory birds and rare insects, amphibians and plants.
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.
With deep gratitude,
Ryan Lutey, Executive Director
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2024 Conservation Accomplishments
Your support of Vital Ground made a lasting impact across the Northern Rockies last year. As the maps, stories and videos below show, you enabled several key habitat conservation projects and 18 conflict prevention partnerships that helped grizzlies, other wildlife and people share the landscape safely (see a full partner list and map later in the report). These wins for wildlife were made possible by you!
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Land Protected: Clark Creek
Vital Ground’s habitat projects in 2024 conserved acres in crucial places, protecting private lands where grizzlies and countless other creatures move between wild strongholds. At the end of the year, a new conservation agreement with landowner partners protected 160 acres of forest and wetland in the Clark Creek drainage west of Lolo, Mont. On the edge of Missoula’s growing human footprint, the area sits at the southern end of a crucial habitat connection between the Northern Continental Divide and Bitterroot Ecosystems. Read more…
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Land Protected: Evaro Canyon
Just north of Missoula, Evaro Canyon splits the Rattlesnake and Ninemile mountain ranges. For grizzlies and other wildlife, it’s a key movement area helping animals skirt around Missoula’s development and connect ecosystems. In October 2024, Vital Ground and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) teamed up on a land purchase in a key spot in the canyon described as “a pinch point where mountain range touches mountain range” by Jamie Jonkel of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Read more…
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Habitat Protection and Restoration in the Cabinet-Yaak
In Montana’s northwestern corner, the Lower 48’s smallest grizzly population persists without the habitat anchor of a national park or large wilderness area. The Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem is split by the Kootenai River, with around 25 grizzlies enduring to the north in the Yaak Valley and another 25 to the south in the Cabinet Mountains. For the past decade, our Wild River Project has helped connect these bears by protecting land in a former subdivision near the confluence of the Yaak and Kootenai rivers. Your support helped us kick off 2024 with a new land purchase at Wild River, while farther north we made strides on an ambitious habitat restoration project to improve wildlife movement across the Yaak Valley bottom. One of several restoration projects on Vital Ground sites that your support enabled in 2024, you can learn more about the effort via the video below:
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Conservation Partners: Conflicts Prevented from Wyoming to Washington
While habitat protection opens the door for grizzlies and other wide-ranging species to move between wild strongholds, they can only do so successfully if they don’t run into trouble with people along the way. That’s why Vital Ground continues our robust conservation partners program to prevent conflicts on the crucial shared landscapes where bears encounter the human footprint in the form of agriculture, recreation or new development. With 18 partners across the region in 2024—including our first electric fencing and bear-proof sanitation work in the North Cascades of Washington—your support made vital landscapes safer for countless animals and people alike. Read more…
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2024 Financial Position
Thanks to the generous contributions of supporters like you, The Vital Ground Foundation ended 2024 in a strong financial position. Public support and revenues totaled $5,297,936.
During this period, 78 percent* of all expenditures were spent on conservation and education programs. Land held for preservation by Vital Ground represented an asset of $12,061,381 as of December 31, 2024.
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.
* 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 2024 business partners:
- Kodiak
- Montana Coffee Traders
- UDAP
- Grizzly Adams
- Grizzly Broadband
- Hey Bear (Outlaw Partners)
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Looking Ahead: 35 Years of Conservation Progress
Your support in 2024 continued Vital Ground’s leadership in grizzly bear and large-landscape conservation, adding important protected acres and community-led coexistence partnerships to the Northern Rockies’ conservation footprint. As we continue moving these vital efforts forward in 2025, we also celebrate the organization’s 35th Anniversary! Check out the graphic at right to see just how much your contributions accomplished for all things wild as we entered our 35th year of work together.
Those numbers are growing steadily higher, too! We kicked off 2025 with the completion of a new conservation agreement for a key piece of rich habitat at the confluence of Meadow Creek and the Yaak River in Montana’s northwestern corner. Several more habitat protection efforts are slated for completion before the year’s end, while another robust group of conservation partners have been hard at work putting Vital Ground support into practice with crucial conflict prevention initiatives across the region.
While uncertainty clouds much of the conservation world—from funding of land and wildlife agencies to shifting management approaches to the grizzly bear and many other species—Vital Ground’s mission remains steadfast and our support base strong. That’s in no small part thanks to our far-reaching and generous community of individual supporters. Now more than ever, we can’t do it without you!
As your support continues to enable our leadership in private land conservation and grizzly bear conflict prevention, we invite you to set up a sustaining monthly giving plan or make a special one-time donation to conservation today in honor of Vital Ground’s 35th anniversary and the challenging but uplifting work we’ll accomplish together over the next 35 years and beyond.
Thank you for enabling a brighter future for grizzlies and all things wild. Just like the wild places we protect together, you inspire us every day!