Skip to content

About PERC

All Areas of Focus

All Research

Donate

Benefitting Conservation

PERC is honored to be the Lead Conservation Partner for Wildlands 2026. We are incredibly grateful to Outlaw Partners and the Wildlands team for this amazing honor.

Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, PERC harnesses incentives to deliver practical conservation solutions that improve stewardship across both private and public lands—from working ranches and wildlife corridors to national parks, forests, and other treasured landscapes of the American West. 

Working alongside ranching families, public land managers, and local communities in places like Montana’s Paradise Valley and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, PERC helps make conservation a win for wildlife, people, and the lands they depend on by aligning economics with ecology.

A Region That Depends on Connectivity

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is one of the largest intact temperate ecosystems on Earth, anchored by the world’s first national park, Yellowstone. The region supports iconic wildlife across a breathtaking landscape that still functions at scale. 

That function depends on lands beyond the park. About 30 percent of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is privately owned, and working ranches provide resources for wildlife as they traverse critical migration corridors and seasonal habitat. 

Each winter, for instance, thousands of elk move from Yellowstone into Montana’s Paradise Valley, relying on private ranchlands for forage and shelter. But sharing the landscape brings real costs for ranchers, from forage losses and fence damage to predator concerns and rising pressures to sell or subdivide. As development accelerates, these working lands, and the wildlife migration corridors they sustain, face increasing risk of fragmentation.

Our Conservation Impact

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, conservation succeeds when working lands, wildlife, and communities thrive together. PERC helps make that possible.

  • Developing practical tools: We reduce conflict, keep migration corridors intact, help sustain working lands, and strengthen habitat connectivity.
  • Collaborating with ranchers and communities: We partner with land stewards, local leaders, and conservation partners to test what works and refine solutions in real-world conditions.
  • Aligning incentives for stewardship: We advance approaches that make conservation workable so private lands remain productive, intact, and wildlife-friendly.

Supporting Working Lands Stewardship in the Region