Roads twine around a mountaintop-removal coal mine in Elk Valley, British Columbia, in a June 2009 picture.

The shot is a product of a recent Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition, or RAVE, to the adjacent Flathead River Valley, which straddles the border between Montana and British Columbia (see map).

Organized by the International League of Conservation Photographers, RAVE photographers, filmmakers, and journalists visited the Flathead region in summer 2009 to document the pristine Rocky Mountain wilderness and garner support for plans to protect Flathead from mining, clear-cut logging, and natural gas drilling.

The RAVE team has joined conservationists calling for parts of Flathead to be named a national park and wildlife management area, as well as for a ban on drilling and mining in the river valley.



A female grizzly bear, or sow, saunters near Swift Current Pass in Glacier National Park, Montana, in a camera-trap picture snapped in summer 2009.

The Flathead region is home to the densest population of grizzly bears in North America, according to Flathead Wild, a conservation group pushing for the creation of a national park in Flathead to protect the wilderness from logging and mining.

The Flathead region is an important migration route for the bears, as well as for deer, elk, and moose, conservationists argue. The network of roads and pipelines associated with gas drilling would get in the way of migrating animals--potentially isolating small populations, thereby increasing the likelihood of inbreeding and its associated health risks.

"Big animals need big places. This sow griz is not an American, not a Canadian, and she doesn't care about borders," RAVE photographer and National Geographic Young Explorer Joe Riis wrote in a blog post from the expedition.



A fly fisher releases a westslope cutthroat trout back into the Flathead River in British Columbia in summer 2009.

At risk due to water pollution from coal mining in the Flathead region, the trout is listed as a "species of concern" by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

Conservationists say the Flathead River's trout include the last genetically pure populations of westslope cutthroat in existence.



Early morning light filters through pine trees in the Flathead River Valley in a summer 2009 RAVE photograph.

Conservationists are calling for the creation of a national park and wildlife management area in the British Columbia portion of the Flathead region, which they argue would fill in a "missing piece" of the nearby Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, a UN World Heritage site.



RAVE photographer and National Geographic Young Explorer Joe Riis snapped this female moose in summer 2009 in the northern Flathead River Valley of British Columbia.

Naming part of British Columbia's Flathead region as a wildlife-management area would improve the environment for game hunters, advocates say. Under such protections, the area's deer, elk, moose, and bears would flourish and be better able to grow to trophy size.



This young cougar, also called a mountain lion, was photographed shortly after crossing a road with its mother near a RAVE campsite in British Columbia in summer 2009.

The Flathead area may be one of the most diverse habitats for carnivores in North America, according to the conservation group Flathead Wild. The region is also an important breeding ground, because it allows genetic populations of species native to the Rockies to connect across the U.S.-Canada border.

"The future of wilderness on this planet is all about connectivity," Vance Martin, president of the nonprofit Wild Foundation, said in an audio interview during the RAVE. "It's all about hooking up the little pieces that are left--and some of the big pieces--and letting wild nature be wild and move and flow."



Young westlope cutthroat trout swim in Pollack Creek, a tributary of the Flathead River in British Columbia. The RAVE team camped near a similar tributary called Sage Creek in summer 2009.

"I spent an afternoon hiking upstream from camp, wading through the icy water and over gravel bars, photographing as I went," Justin Black, director of the International League of Conservation Photographers, wrote in a blog post about Sage Creek.

"Rather than burden myself with a canteen, I drank directly from the creek whenever I felt thirsty. The water was unadulterated and pure, even at the relatively low elevation of our camp down in the valley," he wrote.

"It's a world-class natural treasure worthy of preservation, and I feel fortunate to have been a visitor there."



The Canadian Rockies loom over a mountaintop-removal mining site in the Elk Valley of British Columbia, which is adjacent to the Flathead River Valley.

Currently the Flathead River is so clean it's used as a global benchmark for water purity. But that could change if mining, drilling, and other human operations encroach on the region, conservationists say.

Mountaintop coal mining, for example, alters the landscape permanently and can create debris, flood risks, and water pollution, opponents argue.