Yaak Valley: The Last Grizzly Country Nobody Talks About

In the extreme northwest corner of Montana, where the Kootenai National Forest butts up against the Canadian border and the Idaho Panhandle, the Yaak Valley runs east to west along the Yaak River before it joins the Kootenai. The valley is remote in a way that is not quite like anywhere else in the lower forty-eight: its combination of low-elevation old-growth cedar and hemlock, wetlands, and high-ridge terrain creates a biological diversity that in the Northern Rockies is otherwise found only in Glacier National Park and the adjacent wilderness areas to the south.

The Yaak also contains a small, isolated population of grizzly bears. The population is separate from the main Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly population, cut off by roads and development corridors to the south and east. Wildlife biologists have estimated the Yaak grizzly population at fewer than twenty individuals, a number too small to be genetically viable in the long term without either immigration from the main population or active management.

The writer Rick Bass has lived in the Yaak for decades and has written extensively about the valley's ecological character and the political difficulties of protecting it. His work is partly responsible for the public attention the valley has received, given that its remoteness means most Americans will never see it.

The Kootenai National Forest is also notable for its bull trout population, a cold-water salmonid that requires the cleanest water of any fish in the region and serves as an indicator species for watershed health. The bull trout are declining across most of their range.