The Crown of the Continent is one of North America’s most ecologically diverse and jurisdictionally fragmented landscapes.

the landscape

The Crown of the Continent Ecosystem (CCE) is one of North America’s most iconic and intact landscapes. Nearly 18 million acres in size, it stretches across the international border of the United States (US) and Canada. The Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains converge in the CCE, creating a landscape of vast, sprawling prairies and prominent, jagged peaks. About 11,500 years ago, the land was carved by ancient, retreating ice sheets. The ancestors of Indigenous Peoples were among the first to live, hunt, fish, and gather on the landscape. Over 10,000 years later, Indigenous stewardship and knowledge persists.

Much of the CCE is still in an undeveloped state. Its spectacular landscapes are home to the entire suite of North America’s large carnivores, as well as the greatest plant and aquatic biodiversity in the Rocky Mountains. Waters originating in the CCE spill in three different directions across the North American continent, reaching millions of people downstream who rely on the CCE’s clean water for drinking, irrigation, and recreation. At the CCE’s core is the world’s first International Peace Park (Waterton-Glacier) and the third-largest wilderness area in the continental US (Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex).

Changes ON THE LANDSCAPE

The Crown is a region full of boundaries and borders: Tribes and First Nations; two countries; two provinces and one state; federal, provincial, state, and private lands. As a symbol of the “last, best west,” the Crown is seeing increasing human activity pressures, such as urban and rural residential expansion, increased recreational use, resources use and extraction, and the physical infrastructure needed to support all of these changes. While growth pressures on the Crown operate at different intensities in different places, they are generally dramatic. On top of this, the Crown is a region highly impacted by climate change, as it is warming at two to three times the rate of the global average.

With so many land managers in the Crown, success in addressing these large scale changes relies on collaboration with neighboring managers. The Crown Managers Partnership strives to ensure that managers are working together, not in opposition.

Click around on the map to explore landownership in the Crown of the Continent ecosystem.