Personal tools
You are here: Home → Issues → Wildlands → Areas of Concern → Livingstone-Porcupine → Features
 

Features

Livingstone-Porcupine Features

Area

  • The 4,560 km2 Livingstone-Porcupine area is composed of several smaller areas, including: Beehive Mountain, Whaleback, North Porcupine Hills, Upper Oldman River and Crowsnest Pass. This area is located south of Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country, along the British Columbia - Alberta border.

 

Elevation

  • Tornado Mountain, on the Eastern slopes of the Rockies, reaches a height of 10,167 ft, further east it tapers down to an elevation between 4,000 and 6,000 ft.
Whaleback_lpp_cwallis_400px
Whaleback - Photo Credit: C.Wallis

 

Terrain

  • extremely mountainous to rolling prairies

 

Natural Region

  • Rocky Mountain, Parkland and Grassland regions
    • Subregions: Montane, Sub-Alpine, Alpine, Foothills Parkland, Foothills Fescue

 

 

Ecologically Significant Areas:

  • contains the largest undisturbed area of the Montane subregion in Canada
  • old-growth forests (over 400 years old)
  • high elevation grasslands
  • patterned ground (circles, stripes, nets and polygons)
  • low elevation pass important to east-west migration
  • East Porcupine Hills, which was nominated as a candidate Natural Area

 

 

Drainage

  • South Saskatchewan drainage system- Highwood River tributaries, Willow Creek, Oldman River, Crowsnest River and Castle River
  • Oldman River is the main drainage system.

 

Biodiversity

  • 5 vegetated regions- fescue grassland, aspen parkland, montane, subalpine and alpine - this results in high biodiversity of plants and animals in the area
  • According to Alberta Fish and Wildlife, mountain and foothill regions of southern Alberta constitute some of the most diverse and productive wildlife habitat in Alberta.
  • abundance of large mammals
  • several rare and uncommon plant species
  • numerous plant species that are restricted to the SW corner of the province

 

Fescue Grasslands

  • Ranching has been described as “Alberta’s oldest sustainable industry.”
  • Native fescue grasslands have evolved over 10,000 years to cope with grazing, initially by bison and elk, and subsequently by cattle and wild ungulates.
  • Rough fescue roots may extend up to 3 feet underground, and this biomass stores huge quantities of carbon. Native grasslands provide higher forage value than introduced grass species.
  • Rough fescue maintains its nutritional value throughout the winter, allowing year-round grazing to take place without the need for supplementary feeding, and cope better during periods of drought.


Climate change models for southern Alberta predict that future weather patterns will include wider extremes of wet weather and drought.

 

Wildlife

  • Whaleback is winter range for Alberta’s largest elk herd found completely independent of any national park. Chinook winds help keep the grasslands open in winter.
  • Chinook winds are also good for Bighorn sheep, which concentrate on specific winter range, usually grassland in south exposures.
  • Wild turkeys introduced.
  • Major area for cougars.
  • North Porcupine Hills has Lazuli bunting, Cassin’s finch, blue, ruffed and Franklin’s grouse.
  • Some important habitat for sensitive and “at risk” species, including grizzly bear, American badger, Ferruginous hawk and long-toed salamander.
  • Provincially significant great blue heron breeding habitat.
  • Large mammals: elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, cougar, black bear, wolves
  • Small mammals: red squirrel, pocket gopher
  • Birds: lazuli bunting, Cassin's finch, blue, ruffed and Franklin's grouse
  • Fish: bull trout (COSEWIC vulnerable species), cutthroat trout, dolly varden, Rocky Mountain whitefish
  • Important spawning rivers for Rainbow trout.

 

Cultural

  • Blackfoot and Peigans used the area for hunting and winter camps. There were buffalo jumps in various places in the hills, mostly to the southeast until they were extinguished in the 1880s.
  • The areas was explored and recorded by the Palliser Expedition led by Captain Thomas Blackiston (1858), Robert Dawson, a British surveyor (1884), and by provincial boundary surveyors in 1915.
  • 1903 slide buried the town of Frank in 36 million cubic meters (~100 million tonnes) of limestone and shale, killing 76 people

 

Geology

  • Like most of the Eastern Slopes, the Porcupine Hills were uplifted during the geological disturbances that produced the Rocky Mountains and the Foothills to the west. Although topographically and geographically part of the regional Foothills, they differ notably in their geologic structure.
  • The Porcupine Hills are underlain by very gently tilted and easterly-dipping beds of sandstone and shale deposited by ancient freshwater lakes and rivers. Unlike the dramatically folded and faulted rocks of the Foothills and Rocky Mountains, the primary structural feature of the Hills is a broad, shallow syncline, structurally more similar to the plains.
  • Although parts of the south-central segments of the Porcupine Hills escaped continental glaciation, at least two major ice sheets migrated into, around and through the Hills from the north, east and south. This glacial activity resulted in carving of long, flat valleys and large, deep bedrock coulees and channels along parts of the eastern margin.
Document Actions