On the ridge in front of me, a male mountain goat, its coat the color of winter, drags his broken left back leg. Perhaps the break was caused from a fall when fleeing one of the many predators here. He hobbles forward, glances side to side for predators of the land and air. His struggle for existence is palpable. 

I am hiking along the spine of the Akamina Ridge, a prominent pink-and-gray-colored hogback in a verdant sea of forest where Alberta, British Columbia, and Montana connect. Guiding me are members of the Flathead Wild team. We’ve come here to explore why this place needs more protection.

Biologist John L. Weaver, with the World Conservation Society, says this transboundary region is one of the wildest valleys in North America. Four microclimates meet here to create a rare mixing zone that boasts the highest plant biodiversity in Canada—1,100 identified species and counting. Such flora biodiversity, in turn, provides an ideal nest of sorts, for a wide range of wildlife.  

The Flathead Valley in British Columbia has the largest population of interior grizzly bears anywhere in North America—65 to 80 grizzlies per 385 square miles, according to Bruce McLellan, a wildlife biologist with the BC Forest Service. Grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions, lynx, wolves, and wolverines all yo-yo back and forth across this region without thought of international boundaries, provincial borders, or agency management plans. They don't need passports—yet.

The BC Flathead has been part of a discussion for a century about expanding Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park westward across the continental divide. For almost 30 years, that effort has been spearheaded by Harvey Locke, who organized this hike and is one of the cofounders of the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative (Y2Y), which seeks to create a continent-scale, contiguous wildlife corridor from the Yellowstone River to the Yukon River. Locke first came to the BC Flathead in 1989 and has been working diligently for protection since. 

The BC Flathead area is one of the most critical pieces of Y2Y’s vision of large-scale land conservation in which both nature and people thrive. While part of the area is currently preserved in the 27,000-acre Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park, those protections are insufficient, Locke says. What’s needed is to connect Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness to Canada’s Jasper National Park. That would link the Canadian center of wildlife populations in the Rockies to the United States’s protected areas. 

Though no humans live in the BC Flathead, industries have marred this vast wildland. Over 100 miles of logging and resource extraction roads zigzag through the forest. Mining exploration was halted in 2014, yet largely unchecked clearcuts continue in this landscape.

Worldwide, most protected areas have become truncated biological islands, separated from each other by towns, highways, and farms. Populations of big wildlife—predator and prey alike—are cut off from each other, causing genetic bottlenecks that threaten those species’ long-term viability. "Wildlife are like people and don't want to date their cousins," Locke says. Without a corridor that provides connectivity between one set of wolverines and another set, for example, the outcome for a species is bleak.

As we hike this ridge in the Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park, we catch views of Waterton-Glacier's skyscraping peaks, creased with glacier-fed streams to the south and east. To the northwest is the proposed park expansion—a lush, green river valley surrounded by mountains. The Y2Y expansion would add another 100,000 protected acres to the north and west of this provincial park, assuring this ridge walk to remain intact for humans and animals alike. 

I watch the billy goat limp off to struggle in his harsh landscape. He will most likely be dinner to one of the predators here.

Later that night we arrive back down at Akamina campground. We pull our food and stoves out of the stackable food storage lockers to cook dinner. Under the stars, we talk about some of the obstacles to making this a national park. It will take convincing federal and provincial governments, hunters, industry, recreationalists, and First Nations such as the Ktunaxa. The BC Flathead is their home—¢amna ʔamakʔis, they call it. "Land of the Woodtick." 

The next morning we hike out to the Akamina trailhead and wait for a shuttle that drives us back to Waterton. On the bus, my mind returns to the billy goat and his daily views from the ridge. His life may be nearing its last days, but those of his kind (as well as his predators) can carry forward indefinitely with the right decisions by their human cousins. Holding a map of Y2Y across my lap, I realize that this 100,000 acres is one of the most critical pieces to add to the puzzle of connectivity for wide-ranging wildlife in North America.