Northwest Rockies Keystone Forest

Red denotes forested BLM and national forest lands; green is forested national parks and forested wilderness areas; yellow is miscellaneous forested public lands and private preserves. View the PDF version for more details.

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Known as the “American Serengeti,” stretching across Idaho and Montana into the extreme northwest section of eastern Washington, the Northwest Rockies Keystone Forest is part of the greater North Central Rockies forest ecoregion. This keystone forest encompasses the largest expanse of biological diversity in the lower 48 states and contains the largest contiguous block of coniferous temperate forest in the Intermountain West. It is the only bioregion outside of Alaska that still contains all species present at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Many different forest types can be found here, ranging from wet forests full of cedar, fir and white pine to higher-elevation forests of lodgepole pine, white-bark pine and subalpine fir to drier, lower-elevation forests of Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. Populations of bighorn sheep, grizzly bear, goshawk, elk, caribou and mountain lion roam the region’s forests, mountains and grasslands. Keystone species such as grizzly bear, woodland caribou and bull trout have been listed as threatened and endangered. Much of the nation’s fresh water originates here creating the headwaters for the Columbia River, the Missouri River and even for water draining north into Canada’s Hudson Bay.