Canmore Conservation Group Named Finalist For £1M Earthshot Prize

Canmore-based Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative has been named a finalist for the 2026 Earthshot Prize, putting the organization in the running for £1 million to expand its conservation work.

Known as Y2Y, the group works to keep wildlife habitat connected across a 3,400-kilometre stretch from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the United States to the Yukon.

It is one of three finalists in the prize's Protect and Restore Nature category.

The Earthshot Prize, founded by Prince William in 2020, recognizes environmental work in five categories. Y2Y was among 15 finalists selected from nearly 7,000 nominations in 169 countries.

“I think for us, what we have been able to demonstrate is 30 years of tangible and durable conservation progress,” Y2Y president and chief scientist Jodi Hilty, a Canmore resident, told Bow Valley Insider.

Some of that progress is measurable.

A 2021 study published in Conservation Science and Practice found protected areas within the Y2Y region increased by 80.5 per cent between 1993 and 2018, from roughly 133,000 to 240,000 square kilometres. Earthshot says Y2Y and its more than 800 partners have helped protect about 25 million hectares and supported more than 200 wildlife crossings.

The Bow Valley is a key part of that work.

Y2Y identifies the valley as one of four especially important east-west wildlife connections across the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region. Sitting between Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country, it allows animals to move between large areas of protected habitat, while roads, development and recreation compete for space in the same narrow valley.

Hilty said that pressure is especially visible around Banff, Canada's first national park, and nearby Canmore, where people and large wildlife share the landscape.

“This valley ... is under a tremendous amount of stress,” she said, adding that it has “arguably the highest density of people co-living with large animals like grizzly bears.”

One tangible piece of that network is the Honourable Peter Lougheed Wildlife Overpass over the Trans-Canada Highway east of Canmore. Y2Y had pushed for highway wildlife mitigation in the area for years. The Alberta government built the crossing, which opened in 2025, and Y2Y has also highlighted the participation and leadership of Îyârhe Nakoda (Stoney Nakoda) Nations in bringing the project forward.

But Hilty said the Bow Valley shouldn't be seen as a finished conservation success.

She described the cumulative effects of development around Banff as a potential “death by a thousand cuts.”

The concern, she said, is that individual developments and other pressures can slowly pinch wildlife corridors and increasingly isolate Banff National Park from the larger landscape around it.

That tension is central to Y2Y's approach: protecting individual parks is not enough if animals cannot move safely between them.

Earthshot finalist status brings more than a chance at prize money. All 15 finalists receive mentorship, technical support and access to a global network of businesses, investors, funders and environmental organizations.

Five winners, one in each category, will be announced Nov. 17 in Mumbai.

Hilty said Y2Y would use the attention surrounding the prize to raise the profile of the broader conservation network rather than focus on a single project.

“Y2Y is an organization, but really it's about working across now more than 800 partners over 30 years,” she said.

If Y2Y wins, Hilty said the aim is to give the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region international recognition comparable to some of the world's best-known ecosystems.

“Our goal is to use that to elevate the sort of knowledge and awareness of Yellowstone to Yukon at the same level as something like the Serengeti or the Great Barrier Reef,” she said.

For Hilty, that recognition ultimately comes back to the Bow Valley.

“What happens here matters and reverberates across the region,” she said. “And now suddenly it matters across the globe.”