Besides Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park and Makobe-Grays River Provincial Park, the drainage basin also includes Makobe Grays Ice Margin Conservation Reserve, a 903 hectares reserve on either side of the river around and upstream of the Crane Creek inflow, that protects "Unique spruce-topped moraine ridges" and "Unique jack pine and poplar communities found on the Makobe Grays end moraine".