Crown of the Continent - Keeping a special place 'on the map'

We live in a very special place. In fact, our small, friendly communities are home to what we would call North America’s best backyard — great towns and good neighbors living and working in a truly world-class landscape.

For more than a century people have called this transboundary region the “Crown of the Continent,” and the gems in that Crown — Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, Flathead Lake, the Rocky Mountain Front, Fernie’s snowy slopes — are the reason many of us choose to put down roots here.

Located at the Rocky Mountain intersection of Alberta, Montana and British Columbia, the Crown encompasses 18 million acres of alpine mountains, lush river bottoms, timber and prairie and icy cold rivers. It is a place that shapes us perhaps even more than we shape it, a place that provides us a unique cultural identity, as well as both lifestyle and livelihood.

And the more we come to understand our Crown, the more we realize that its whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, your little valley is a pretty special place — but it’s made even better by the fact that it’s connected to the next valley, and to the valley after that. You can still, if you’re careful, walk from Missoula, Mont., to Sparwood, B.C., and cross only a half dozen roads — a fact biologists say is one reason the Crown still has so much remarkable wildlife.

And just as this region’s wild-open landscapes are connected, so are its people. The transboundary Crown of the Continent is home to some 160,000 people — and to more than 100 government agencies, Tribes, First Nations, non-profits, and community-based partnerships, as well as numerous tourism and natural resources-based enterprises — all working to tie together our landscape, our lifestyle and our livelihood.

These groups have recognized that, like the Crown, their whole is greater than the sum of their parts; and so they have formed unprecedented partnerships and coalitions, working together to envision a stronger future for our communities.

When folks from around the country are looking for examples of successful community collaboration, they look to the Crown. That’s because here, more than anywhere else, we have discovered the power of working together on issues that combine conservation, culture and community, proving that jobs and the environment go hand in hand.

Since 2001, the Crown Managers Partnership has brought together some two dozen state, provincial, federal and tribal land management agencies to work cooperatively on managing the whole rather than the parts. And since 2002, the Crown of the Continent Resource Learning Center has coordinated information sharing between the region’s scientists and land managers. The goal is to make smarter decisions based on better understanding of the Crown’s natural, social and cultural heritage.

Elsewhere in the region, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem Education Consortium develops place-based curricula, workshops and projects, while the Crown of the Continent Geotourism Council brings together conservation, community and business leaders to promote a sustainable tourism economy that respects our historical, cultural and natural heritage.

The University of Montana and University of Calgary have combined forces on a “Transboundary Program,” offering internships and shared courses that explore the skills needed to manage across administrative boundaries. Missoula’s UM also has launched a Crown of the Continent Initiative, aimed at coordinating research and conducting educational outreach to Crown communities.

And throughout the 18-million-acre region, the Crown of the Continent Conservation Initiative is working alongside business and community leaders to ensure that the parts remain connected to the whole, and that our landscape remains connected to our livelihood.

These extraordinary collaboratives — and many more not mentioned here — have come together with the understanding that, despite our many differences, we choose to live and work here for many of the same reasons. The Crown’s economic development experts report that business owners looking to relocate say quality of life is as key to their decision as are tax rates, labor costs and traditional “bricks-and-mortar” infrastructure. It is our “natural infrastructure,” they say, that is in high demand and limited supply — and that makes us uniquely competitive in the high-stakes world of economic development.

How best to build on our fortunate inheritance, however, remains a topic of robust conversation. To that end, the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent — a sort of network of networks — has convened to bring together the many collaboratives already working in the region. This month marks the Roundtable’s 3rd annual conference, titled “Pathways to Prosperity: Caring for Communities in the Crown of the Continent.” The focus is on that intersection between economy and environment — which, it turns out, go hand in hand.

We believe history has shown our communities’ greatest strength lies in our ability to work together toward a common future, and we encourage everyone to attend the Sept. 27-28 Roundtable conference in Fernie, BC. Details are available at http://crownofthecontinent.eventbrite.com.

As residents of the world’s best backyard, with so very much in common, we share an obligation to work together to craft our own future, rather than waiting for others to do it for us — because no one knows the Crown better than those of us who live daily among its finest jewels. We’ll see you in Fernie.