Protect This Place: Montana’s Untamed Black Ram Forest

A proposed timber sale within the Yaak Valley threatens massive old-growth trees and habitat. Instead, could it become the nation’s first climate refuge?

Photo credit: iStock

By The Revelator and Rick Bass

Can one tree save a forest? Absolutely.

The Place:

The Black Ram region of extreme northwestern Montana — on the U.S.-Canada border — exists in a magical seam of unparalleled biodiversity where the Pacific Northwest integrates into the Northern Rockies. It’s the first place where water flows into the state of Montana, and the last place where sunlight falls each day.

Black Ram is in Yaak Valley, itself part of the Kootenai National Forest, which excels at storing significant amounts of carbon in long-term safekeeping. It’s the wettest place in Montana. It’s the lowest elevation. It’s the northernmost. Its waters are the purest — the only watershed in the state that remains free of aquatic invasive species. Fire will come here, too, but it will come here last.

There’s still not a single acre of permanently protected land in the Yaak, which we at the Yaak Valley Forest Council define as the million-acre land mass lying north of the…