Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks

Official name: Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks

Location: Alberta and British Columbia, Canada

Type: Natural

Year of inscription: 1984

Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks is a group of seven parks located in the Canadian Rocky Mountains that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Four of these are National Parks, including Banff, Jasper, Yoho, and Kootenay Parks, and three are British Columbia provincial parks, including Mount Robson, Mount Assiniboine, and Hamber Parks. These parks are considered places of outstanding natural beauty and universal value for their landscapes and natural features, such as mountain peaks, glaciers, forests, river headwaters, fossils, and hot springs covering about 23,600 square kilometers.

Workers from Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) building the transcontinental railway in the 1880s discovered Castleguard Cave and Basin Hot Springs in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains. Because of this find, Banff became the first Canadian park preserved in 1885, which was the beginning of Canada’s national park system. In 1983, the four national parks were nominated to be included on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, and the three provincial parks were added later that next year when the nomination was accepted.

The Parks are home to places such as the Burgess Shale site at Yoho National Park, which contains a collection of about 150 unique marine species of soft-bodied creatures that have been exceptionally well preserved. In addition, the parks also contain the vast Columbia Icefield, which is the largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains. Canada’s longest cave, the Castleguard Cave, can be found in Banff National Park along with the turquoise waters of Lake Louise amidst the Victoria Glacier.

History

The history of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks started in 1885 when 2,600 hectares of Banff were declared a Park Reserve after CPR workers found a cave and mineral hot springs while clearing the way for the Canadian Transcontinental Railway that was to extend from the east to west coast. These sites were thought to make excellent tourist attractions, so the Canadian government decided to protect the area, and it became Canada’s first national preserve. It was later designated a National Park, which was the first in Canada and the third worldwide. The area around Banff was enlarged and renamed Rocky Mountains Park of Canada in 1887 under the Rocky Mountains Park Act. However, in 1930 it was renamed Banff National Park and the borders were extended.

In 1886, Yoho National Park was established, and this was the second national park in Canada. It was a small park of only 26 square kilometers around Mt. Stephen; however, in later years, it was expanded four times. The year the park was established, R.G. McConnell, a Geological Survey of Canada geologist discovered a fossil bed on the side of Mt. Stephen. Fossils had been found in the area around the mountain for many years by other geologists, First Nations peoples, prospectors, and railway workers. Along with McConnell, a scientist named Otto Klotz is also credited for possibly officially discovering the fossil beds. He was unable to climb the mountain himself, so he sent his cook, who returned with a report of the rich deposit of fossils around the same time as McConnell.

Charles Doolittle Walcott came to Yoho in the early 1900s to study the known fossil sites around Mt. Stephens and search for more. In 1909, he found the famous Burgess Shale site situated on a ridge between Wapta Mountain and Mt. Field where, over the years, fossils were carefully excavated and studied. In 1980, Burgess Shale site became a UNESCO World Heritage site and was later incorporated into the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks system along with the expanded borders of Yoho National Park.

In 1907, the fifth Canadian National Park, Jasper Forest Park, was created, and it covered 1,295,000 hectares of land. It was preserved to protect the land and the ecosystem of the Athabasca valley as railways started to infiltrate the area through Yellowhead pass, which was a more northerly route than the CPR railway took. In 1913, Mount Robson Provincial Park, which shares a border with Jasper National Park, was officially recognized by the Canadian government.

Hamber Provincial Park, which is bordered on three sides by Jasper National Park, was created in 1941. It became the largest protected wilderness area in Canada but was greatly reduced in size in the early 1960s. This reduction was due to its prime location for the development of hydroelectric power from the upper Columbia River and to re-route the Trans-Canada Highway. In addition, the forest industry put pressure on the Canadian government to allow logging in the area. As a result, most of the protection was removed from the area, leaving just an area around Fortress Lake of about 24,500 hectares.

In 1920, an area of land on the west slope of the Continental Divide near Banff was relinquished by British Columbia in exchange for a grant from the Canadian federal government to finish Highway 93. This became Kootenay National Park, and Highway 93 became the main road in the park. Two years later, in 1922, Mt. Assiniboine, on the north border of Kootenay became a Provincial Park. In 1973, the protected land around Mt. Assiniboine was expanded to protect the watershed and alpine areas, and it also served to link Kootenay National Park and Banff National Park.

In 1984, the four National Parks of Banff, Yoho, Jasper, and Kootenay were designated by UNESCO to become Rocky Mountain National Parks. Later that year, they requested the Canadian government to consider including the three nearby provincial parks. Kananaskis Provincial Park, later renamed Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, was suggested to the committee as well, but it was not included within the World Heritage site.

Significance

The parks of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks consist of outstanding biogeographical features that exemplify the diversity of the North American Rocky Mountains. This group of parks annually attract millions of visitors to appreciate the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountain Range.

The central Canadian Rocky Mountains are situated along the Continental Divide and are made of sedimentary rock from the Precambrian to Cretaceous periods. The Main Ranges of these mountains consist of limestone, dolomite, sandstone, and shale. The highest mountains in the parks, such as Mts. Robson, Columbia, Forbes, Alberta, and Assiniboine are all over 3,600 meters high. The Front Ranges of Banff and Jasper have layers of limestone and shale with a rugged, saw-tooth appearance. The Western Ranges of these mountains found in the provincial parks and Kootenay and Yoho National Parks consist of thick folded shale rock formations, which include the Burgess Shale site.

The Burgess Shale Cambrian and Precambrian fossil sites are of significant interest as they provide a window into the past through unusually well-preserved marine fossils. The species of soft-bodied organisms lived about 540 million years ago, and the site contains about 150 varieties, some of which have not been found anywhere else in the world

Ancient glacial geological processes can be seen in valleys and canyons carved out of the landscape, and the ongoing glacial processes continue in icefields and remnant valley glaciers as land is eroded and sediment deposited. Active glaciers and icefields can be found in the Main Ranges, which includes the Columbia Icefield, which is North America’s largest sub-arctic interior active glacier.

Four major river systems have their headwaters in the parks, including the North Saskatchewan, Athabasca, Columbia, and Fraser Rivers. Other significant bodies of water include the headwaters of the Fraser River and the Fortress Lake watershed. The various parks contain numerous lakes in alpine valleys and depressions formed by glacial activity in plateaus.

The parks contain the four major ecosystems found in the Rockies: alpine meadows, sub-alpine grasslands, montane wetlands, and montane boreal forests. The areas support numerous varieties of plants and vegetation, such as lichen. Pine trees, such as Douglas fir, white spruce, aspen, and poplar thrive in lower-elevation forests. Above the tree-line, hardier shrubs and small trees include dwarf birch, willows, heath, sedge, and mountain avens.

Animals also thrive in protected wilderness areas of the parks. Rocky mountain goats, bighorn sheep, northern pika, and hoary marmot can be found roaming the higher altitude alpine meadows. In the denser forest cover, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, caribou, red deer, red squirrels, grey wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, wolverines, lynx, and puma all make their homes. Over 280 species of birds have been identified in the parks, and other animals, such as toads, salamanders, and snakes can be seen. The Banff Springs snail is listed as endangered and is found only in five of the warm mineral springs located on Sulphur Mountain in Banff.

Bibliography

“Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks.” UNESCO World Heritage Convention, 2022, whc.unesco.org/en/list/304/. Accessed 27 June 2022.

“Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks.” World Heritage Datasheet, 2017, http://world-heritage-datasheets.unep-wcmc.org/datasheet/output/site/canadian-rocky-mountain-parks/. Accessed 27 June 2022.

Finkelstein, Maxwell W. “Kootenay National Park.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2020, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/kootenay-national-park. Accessed 27 June 2022.

“Hamber Provincial Park.” British Columbia.com, 2021, britishcolumbia.com/things-to-do-and-see/parks-and-trails/kootenay-rockies/hamber-provincial-park/. Accessed 27 June 2022.

“History and Heritage.” Banff & Lake Louise, 2022, www.banfflakelouise.com/banff-national-park/history-heritage. Accessed 27 June 2022.

James-Abra, Erin. “Jasper National Park.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2020, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jasper-national-park. Accessed 27 June 2022.

“The History of Yoho National Park and the Discovery of the Burgess Shale.” The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation, 2018, www.burgess-shale.bc.ca/the-history-of-yoho-national-park-and-the-discovery-of-its-fossils/. Accessed 27 June 2022.

“World Heritage Sites in Canada: Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks.” Parks Canada, 2019, www.pc.gc.ca/en/culture/spm-whs/sites-canada/sec02h. Accessed 27 June 2022.