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Canada World Heritage SitesWaterton-Glacier International Peace ParkAlberta
It was the Rotary Clubs of Alberta and Montana that proposed, in 1931, uniting Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the first such park in the world. It was intended not just to promote peace and goodwill between nations, but also to underscore the international nature of wilderness and the co-operation required in its protection. And certainly within the two parks, 526-square-kilometre Waterton Lakes and 4,051-square-kilometre Glacier, nature has provided much that is worthy of protection: high mountains and deep canyons, forest belts and prairie grasslands, deep glacial-trough lakes and rivers that feed three oceans. Indeed, few areas can claim as much diversity within such a concentrated area. Not least, the abrupt rise of the Rockies from the prairie flatlands has made the twin parks the place “where the mountains meet the prairie.” Matching the range of ecoregions is a corresponding diversity of wildlife - mountain goats, bighorn sheep, coyotes, grizzly bears, scores of birds, and a celebrated “international” herd of elk that migrates annually between summer mountain habitat in Glacier and winter prairie ranges in Waterton. An Aboriginal presence in the
region goes back 12,000 years, and there remain places in both parks
that hold deep significance for First Nations
peoples. Indeed, the International Peace Park has grown to become
a park of three nations: Canada, the United States and the Blackfoot
Confederacy.  Parks Canada Web sites: United States National Park Service Web site:
World Heritage Sites in the USA:
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