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The U.S. and Canadian ags blow in the wind at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
PRESERVING AND PROMOTING PEACE
In an evolving global environment, Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park stands out as a model of diplomacy and transboundary collaboration. As the world’s rst international peace park dat- ing back to 1932, it set the standard and paved the way for future transboundary collaborations. Today, there are 170 peace parks worldwide.
“Glacier really does have an interna- tional reputation,” Glacier National Park Superintendent Je Mow has said. “The 1932 designation creating the world’s rst international peace park still resonates on that global scale.”
In the coming weeks, the in u- ence and inspiration of Waterton-Gla- cier International Peace Park will come into focus with two events intertwined around the same celebration.
Regional Rotary Clubs will host the annual Hands Across the Border Cel- ebration, a tradition entering its 50th year. The two-day event is Sept. 16-17 and will feature presentations by Ifan Thomas, superintendent of Waterton Lakes National Park, and Mow, among other speakers celebrating the peace park and its role in humanitarian and envi- ronmental e orts. For more information about the assembly, visit www.waterton- glacierpeacepark.org.
“It is a symbolic designation, and it’s something that goes back to the Rotari- ans pursuing a symbol of the close rela- tionship between the two countries,” Thomas said. “It’s evolved into some- thing that is now a model for transbound- ary conservation around the world.”
Thomas said the tight-knit relation- ship between Waterton and Glacier has helped furnish important wildlife and habitat studies, including collaborative grizzly bear and whitebark pine research, as well as important teamwork. Last summer, while crews scrambled to ght the worst wild re season in a decade in Glacier Park, Waterton crews suppressed a blaze near Goat Haunt in Montana.
“The U.S. folks were busy dealing with a whole bunch of res, so we managed the incident and helped out where we could,” Thomas said. “It’s because of that long- standing partnership and working together over many decades that we have the comfort and ease of collaborating.”
Along with the Rotary International tradition, another new event, called Hands Across Borders, is being held at Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier Park from Sept. 13-18 with people from around the world coming together to discuss the peace park model and similar global ini- tiatives. The event, organized in part through the National Park Service with the Glacier National Park Conservancy, the University of Montana and Rotary International, aims to celebrate the role of peace parks as a stimulus for cross-bor- der partnerships.
“It’s really an opportunity to both build and share knowledge about how to catalyze these things, make them suc- cessful, and how to sustain them over time,” said Matthew McKinney, director of the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Montana.
“(This event) is to acknowledge the
inspiration that the world’s rst interna- tional peace park has had throughout the world and to provide a good example and a ton of inspiration for what other people are doing.”
Eighty- ve years ago, on July 4-5, Rotarians from Alberta and Montana came together to host an inaugural good- will meeting at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton. Nearly 100 members laid out an ambitious — and unprecedented — vision, unanimously approving a res- olution supporting the creation of the world’s rst international peace park between Waterton and Glacier.
As the global political climate was turning increasingly divisive and com- bative, the American and Canadian gov- ernments banded together and signed the resolution into law in 1932, forming the 1,720-square-mile peace park.
“The unheralded line that separates Canada and the United States is the lon- gest unforti ed border in the world today, and perhaps in all of history,” Stewart L. Udall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, said in 1967. “It says to mankind: Let not the cartographers rule, elevate nature and human friendship.”
PROTECTING THE PEACE
Goat Haunt, the solitary heart of Gla- cier-Waterton International Peace Park, is also an important point along the lon- gest undefended border in the world. One of the most remote locations in Glacier Park with access only by boat, foot or air, the outpost garners a fair share of atten- tion from federal agents who have main- tained high scrutiny in and around the
site, keeping watch for possible illegal entries into the country.
Montana shares the longest section of border with Canada in the continental U.S., 545 miles. Forty miles of that bor- der cut through the rugged, mountainous terrain of Glacier Park, which is guarded by border agents stationed in White sh and Havre, including a station and cam- pus at the St. Mary Station and Port of Entry near Babb.
In the last decade, the U.S. government has devoted more funding to developing northern border security resources and installing technology infrastructure and other means of defense, including roll- ing out a growing number of unmanned aircraft to patrol from high in the sky, according to government records.
A bill is currently stagnating in Con- gress that would examine security along the northern border and study current and potential security issues and chal- lenges for government agencies tasked with defending it. The Northern Border Security Review Act would provide the rst signi cant analysis of the U.S.-Ca- nadian border since 2010, when the Gov- ernment Accountability O ce conducted a similar assessment and determined the threat of potential terrorists entering the country from Canada was greater than through Mexico. Only 32 miles along the entire northern border achieved “an acceptable level of security,” the report stated.
Extremism continues to present trou- bling issues abroad, and concerns have increased in recent years with a spurt of terrorist activities in Canada, including a
AUGUST 31, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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