Published in the January/February 2017 issue of Canadian Geographic
Harvey Locke, founder of the monumental Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, talks about how Y2Y continues to evolve as it turns 20 and why the Nature Needs Half conservation edict is gaining momentum
Harvey Locke thinks big — continentally, actually — but most importantly, he follows through. In 1997, he and an ensemble of conservationists and scientists founded the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative with the unprecedented idea of not just protecting but connecting as much of the intact temperate and boreal mountain ecosystem between southern Wyoming and the northern Yukon as possible. Twenty years on, they’ve more than doubled the park and conservation-land area in this critical 3,500-kilometre-long corridor, facilitating the movements of countless species across its channels and improving how humans and wildlife coexist on the landscape. The idea of “large landscape conservation” has caught on around the world, and Locke is now also promoting his Nature Needs Half movement, which as the name might suggest is the same transformative idea writ on an even grander scale.