Waterton Lakes National Park of Canada
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park: A World Heritage Site
In 1932, the United States and Canada joined together to create the world’s first International Peace Park: Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (WGIPP).
At the time of inscription, the peace park commemorated the peace and goodwill our two nations share. Today, Waterton Lakes and Glacier national parks use peace and goodwill to work towards shared management - protecting the water, plants and animals that are found in the IPP. You will find the Waterton–Glacier International Peace Park an oasis of solitude and tranquility, a powerful setting for personal reflection on peace.
People have always been at the forefront of the WGIPP. Beginning in 1911, Waterton’s first park official, John G. "Kootenai" Brown, forged a friendship with Henry "Death on the Trail" Reynolds, an American Ranger from Goat Haunt, MT. Upon meetings and visits with one another the two men discussed the idea of joining Waterton and Glacier. Both men felt that the upper Waterton valley, which is intersected by the Canada/US border, could not and should not be divided.
"The unheralded line that separates Canada and the United States is the longest unfortified border in the world today, and perhaps in all of history. It says to mankind: Let not the cartographers rule, elevate nature and human friendship."
Stewart L. Udall U.S. Secretary of the Interior, 1967
Brown and Reynolds recognized both parks share the same geology, climate, wildlife and ecology, and should be managed as one protected area. Reynolds had a memorable quote on the matter when he said, “The geology recognizes no boundaries, and as the lake lay... no man-made boundary could cleave the waters apart." Although both men would pass away a few years later, their idea of joining Waterton Lakes and Glacier national parks would live on. The idea of an international peace park would eventually be re-ignited in the 1930s by the Alberta and Montana Rotary Clubs.
On December 6, 1995 UNESCO designated the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park as a World Heritage Site.
UNESCO World Heritage Site Statement of Significance
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park has a distinctive climate, physiographic setting, mountain-prairie interface, and tri-ocean hydrographical divide. It is an area of significant scenic values with abundant and diverse flora and fauna.
Criteria
(vii) Both national parks were originally designated by their respective nations because of their superlative mountain scenery, their high topographic relief, glacial landforms, and abundant diversity of wildlife and wildflowers.
(ix) The property occupies a pivotal position in the Western Cordillera of North America resulting in the evolution of plant communities and ecological complexes that occur nowhere else in the world. Maritime weather systems unimpeded by mountain ranges to the north and south allow plants and animals characteristic of the Pacific Northwest to extend to and across the continental divide in the park. To the east, prairie communities nestle against the mountains with no intervening foothills, producing an interface of prairie, montane and alpine communities. The international peace park includes the headwaters of three major watersheds draining through significantly different biomes to different oceans. The biogeographical significance of this tri-ocean divide is increased by the many vegetated connections between the headwaters. The net effect is to create a unique assemblage and high diversity of flora and fauna concentrated in a small area.
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park: UNESCO World Heritage Site
Waterton Presents Anniversary Gift to Glacier National Park