152 COMMi;SSION OF CONSERVATION 



jack pine, which only needs protection to be a very valuable product 

 in the future and to be of great protective value on these sand hills. 

 This reserve will also furnish a park and pleasure ground for the city of 

 Prince Albert, and will be of great value to the city for recreative 

 purposes of all kinds. The rifle range for the military district with 

 headquarters at Prince Albert is located on the reserve. This tract was 

 carefully examined in 1911 and it is proposed to include an additional 

 area of 60 square miles. 



Province of Alberta 

 When the Rocky Mountains Forest reserve was established by 

 the Forest Reserves Act, the examination of all of the boundary had not 

 been completed. The examination has been continued since that time 

 and it is proposed to add some a4ditional areas to the reserve. In the 

 southern part of Alberta, a little to the north of the Crow's Nest Branch 

 of the Canadian Pacific railway, is a tract of land known as the Por- 

 cupiae hills, which is separated by a narrow valley from the Rocky 

 Mountains proper. These hills rise to a height of from 5,000 to 6,000 

 feet and have in places very good stands of spruce, lodgepole pine and 

 Douglas fir. It is the centre of the grazing district where the annual 

 precipitation is not very large and its value as a watershed is very 

 great. Steps have been taken for the careful protection of this area 

 from fire and it will be a great convenience to a ranching population in 

 that vicinity, and the proposal for the reservation has their full support. 



In the northern part of the reserve along the head waters of the 

 Saskatchewan and Athabasca rivers the examination of the boundary 

 had not been completed when the reserve was established by Act of 

 Parliament, and the preliminary line was laid down in the statement. 

 Further inspection however, has shown that additional lands shotdd be 

 included in the reserve, as the elevated foothill cotmtry extends very 

 much farther eastward into the prairie in the northern part' of the 

 moimtain range. The tract proposed to be included does not contain 

 any large areas of mature timber but the land is high and open and in 

 many cases carries extensive muskegs. The timber is spruce and 

 lodgepole pine with occasional groves of Douglas fir. The growth on 

 well-drained lands in this district is rapid, and its possibilities for the 

 production of timber for the prairie districts is only limited by the 

 possibility of protecting it from fire. During the past year the organ- 

 ization for protecting it from fire has been much more thoroughly 

 worked out and considerable work in the building of trails and otherwise 

 providing means of communication so that fires can be handled readily . 

 has been carried on. The total area proposed to be added to this 

 reserve is 2,675 square miles. 



