Bob Edwards: This is Morning Edition, I’m Bob Edwards. You already know about Y2K, the infamous turn-of-the-millennium computer glitch. We have a different y story today, about a stunningly ambitious conservation plan and an adventure that’s underway to help achieve it. Our latest National Geographic Radio Expedition finds NPR’s Alex Chadwick in western Canada, on the trail of something called Y2Y.

Chadwick: Y2Y is about the chance to sustain the wild glories of North America. It’s a chance improbably better than most of us would think. U.S. and Canadian conservationists say a series of wildlife corridors along the Rocky Mountains between Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, and Canada’s Yukon Territory, on the Alaskan border, could tie together islands of wildland to create something like the famous game reserves of the African plains, only far bigger: Yellowstone-to-Yukon...Y2Y.

(SOUND EFFECT: SOUNDS OF TOWN FOLLOWED BY AN ELK CALL) Canada’s Banff National Park—and the town of Banff—lies right in the middle.

(SOUND EFFECT: ELK CALL) That’s a bull elk, looking for a good time over at a local soccer field. During the September mating season, big, semitame elk wander around the streets of Banff like conventioneers at Club Med—which is not what Y2Y has in mind.

Mike McIver: The wild animals, the wary ones, simply wouldn’t be interested in trying to get through here.

Chadwick: (SOUND EFFECT: AMBIENT HIKING SOUNDS) That’s Mike McIver, a Banff naturalist and activist for 30 years. We hiked up to an open place on a cliff overlooking the town to see how everything ran together below.

McIver: I’ve been losing a lot of battles, as you can tell by the amount of development.

Chadwick: Banff is like other places in the Rockies these days: Spectacular mountainsides frame a narrow valley floor, a golf course, a resort center, downtown trophy shopping stores: Ralph Lauren, the Gap—with Asian subtitles. The Rockies are booming.

McIver: You know we could lose the bears and the wolves and it would still be an extraordinarily beautiful place, so it’s difficult for people to understand. “It looks so beautiful, how could there be anything wrong with it?” (SOUND EFFECT: HIGHWAY TRAFFIC)

Chadwick: Well, it would be wrong to lose big predators like bear and wolves, to cut them off with highways from their normal prey—the local elk herd, for instance.

The Y2Y conservation area would include almost one-half million square miles [800,000 square kilometers], one of the largest wildlife protection areas in the world. (SOUND EFFECT: HIGHWAY TRAFFIC) The premise of Y2Y—supported by heavyweight environmental groups—is that in the northern Rocky Mountains very moderate conservation practices can allow bears and wolves to coexist with the three and a half million people who live in the region. A man named Tony Clevenger is experimenting with some of those practices on the highways around Banff.

Tony Clevenger: They’re basically tunnels underneath a highway.

Chadwick: Wildlife underpasses—so animals can get across big, fenced-off highways. They’re spaced every two miles [three kilometers] along a trial section of the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park.

Clevenger: For some animals it may look a little threatening to travel in one of these, with the sound of the traffic and highway, but amazingly, quite a number of species have adapted to these underpasses.

Chadwick: Planners from the U.S. come to see these large-scale wildlife corridor tests. And the results are of keen interest to a Calgary lawyer, Harvey Locke, who originated the Y2Y concept. (SOUND EFFECT: SOUND OF A MEETING)

Harvey Locke: In a very real sense it’s the wild heart of the continent, it’s the place that’s most intact, where all the things that belong are still there.

Chadwick: I met him at the Calgary library, with several hundred people at a community meeting for Y2Y. He’s spent years proselytizing for big predators that need to roam over large ranges of land.

Locke: We’re going to have to figure out a way to make our movements accommodate nature’s movements or we’re going to lose nature. It’s really a question of whether we’re going to share this landscape with the magnificent animals such as the grizzly bear and the wolf.

Chadwick: The best known advocate for Y2Y these days may be a solitary young wildlife biologist by the name of Karsten Heuer. (SOUND EFFECT: FADE TO AMBIENT TRAIL SOUNDS)

Karsten Heuer: You know, I’m naturally attracted to adventure and have never had an easy life of being inside or sedentary. So I thought, How can I tie together adventure that would also attract people who otherwise wouldn’t be concerned by Y2Y?

Chadwick: He’s undertaken an epic trek to cover the entire 22 hundred miles [3,500 kilometers] from Yellowstone to Yukon—on foot, on skis and snowshoes, by canoe (SOUND EFFECT: HORSE SIGH)...and one section of it by horse. Usually he’s alone, in high country, following the migratory paths of the large animals that Y2Y is trying to save.

Heuer: I’m trying to go through the same sorts of valleys and high mountain passes and also encountering some of the barriers that they might be encountering as they might be going from Yellowstone to Yukon. So the route so far has actually been a lot more remote than it would have to be if I wasn’t so concerned about going to these areas where bear, wolves, and wolverine would be going through.

Chadwick: You could walk an easier route than the one you’ve chosen?

Heuer: [Laughing] Definitely!

Chadwick: (SOUND EFFECT: PACKING ROPES) We’re cinching rope and canvas over packing boxes strapped on the back of a mule, preparing to ride the four-day section north of Banff.

Karsten Heuer is on an adventure with purpose. He’s making a ground survey of the Y2Y range, counting highways, railroads, deforested areas. As important, he is out to capture people’s imaginations. He visits schools and town meetings, talks with ranchers and local groups, like some old-time circuit rider, preaching the gospel of Y2Y.

(SOUND EFFECT: MOUNTING HORSES AND DEPARTING) We’re saddling up—Karsten, a couple of trail friends, a wrangler to help with the horses, and Radio Expeditions.

Heuer: We’re headed up over a place called Elk Pass. Follow that into the Cascade River Valley. That’s where we’ll be stopping for the night. (SOUND EFFECT: HORSES CLOPPING)

Chadwick: The trail led up toward Elk Pass at about 6,000 feet [2,000 meters]. The air was cool in the morning. We rode through a forest of soft, black earth and tall pines that felt undisturbed. Leafy plants on the ground were changing in dimming stages from green to yellow. The way got steep in places, and the horses chose their own, unhurried pace. We had nowhere to be for four days to come, and we passed from the town behind us into the peace of outdoors. (SOUND EFFECT: HORSES CLOPPING)

[To Heuer] What has surprised you most in the trip so far?

Heuer: The most surprising thing was how much of it is still there. A good way I like to explain it to people—I’ve now been on the trail for about 80 days, and of those 80 days there’s only been 14 I’ve not seen evidence of recent grizzly bear activity, whether it be tracks, recent digs, rub trees, or their scat. (SOUND EFFECT: HORSES CLOPPING)

Chadwick: The other numbers he’d counted were startling to me: In the 12 hundred miles [1,900 kilometers] between Yellowstone and Banff, just 8 highways that would need some kind of overpass or tunnels for wildlife; 3 railroads; and in all that distance he’d crossed, just 25 fences belonging to private landowners. The figures suggest that Y2Y is a real possibility. (SOUND EFFECT: HORSE WHINNY)

We got closer to the pass and rode into a cloud. It began misting, and the mist turned to rain, and then the rain turned to sleet, and then it began to snow—big, gloppy flakes. We got off the horses to walk, because that was how to stay warm.

(SOUND EFFECT: DISMOUNTING) This is what he had seen on his long walk, Karsten said: an enormous range of North America that still looks like this, still feels like this, and maybe could stay like this.

Heuer: There are key areas that you don’t have 50 to 100 years; you’ve got maybe 5 to 10 years before things are completely cut off. I’m really trying to push this thing forward, give it a bit of a kick in the pants and make sure it happens in time for some of the key areas.

Chadwick: We followed the trail down through a long descent. The afternoon began to clear, and the horses waded into the cold, knee-deep water of the Cascade River (SOUND EFFECT: STREAM CROSSING), and on toward the floor of the valley before us. The next day would be more difficult, I knew. We were headed over the Dormer Pass.

For Radio Expeditions, this is Alex Chadwick, NPR News, Banff National Park.

Bob Edwards: Radio Expeditions is a coproduction of NPR and the National Geographic Society. The story of Y2Y continues tomorrow. And for more details, look on the Web at nationalgeographic.com.

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