mission & key programs
The Vital Ground Foundation’s mission is to protect and restore North America’s grizzly bear populations for future generations by conserving wildlife habitat and by supporting programs that prevent conflicts between bears and humans. Our strategic One Landscape Initiative prioritizes habitat and linkage areas that we work to protect via conservation easement and land acquisition. It also identifies hot spots for collaborative and community-led conflict prevention projects.
service area
As the only accredited land trust dedicated to protecting grizzly bear habitat, Vital Ground’s mission takes us across their range in the Northern Rockies. Based in Missoula, Montana, we have project sites throughout western Montana and northern Idaho, with conservation partnerships stretching into Wyoming and Washington.
unique in the central rocky mountains
Working regionally across the Northern Rockies, Vital Ground is focused on building landscape-level connections between key wilderness strongholds. We serve diverse communities and ecosystems ensuring the entire region retains the wild animals and wild character that make it so special. Our focal species, the grizzly bear, needs protected open space and linkages between the Northern Continental Divide, Cabinet-Yaak, Selkirk, Bitterroot, and Greater Yellowstone Ecosystems. Due to their role as an umbrella species, helping grizzly populations thrive helps the entire ecosystem thrive. From native trout and rare birds to people, a connected landscape with bears is a healthy and resilient one for all creatures.
project highlight
Vital Ground recently worked with a landowner in Montana’s Yaak Valley to protect the confluence of Meadow Creek and the Yaak River through a conservation easement. The 40-acre site protected in early February 2025 is a natural movement area for a wide diversity of wildlife, including one of the Lower 48’s smallest grizzly bear populations. The long-term survival of this population depends on increasing its genetic diversity through breeding with bears from elsewhere. With a recent uptick in grizzly movement between the Yaak and the Cabinet Mountains to the south, conservation of habitat linkages provides resilience for wildlife against the backdrop of numerous climate impacts and region-wide development pressures. In addition to protecting wildlife movement, the conservation easement helps maintain the Yaak’s rural, scenic character and extends a family’s century-long legacy on the land. Learn more at: https://www.vitalground.org/vital-ground-landowner-conserve-key-yaak-valley-habitat/.
Photo courtesy of Vital Ground Foundation.
