Aulavik National Park

Aulavik National Park protects a remote Arctic landscape at the northern end of Banks Island in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Named from Inuvialuktun for “place where people travel,” it spans more than 12,000 square kilometres of treeless polar desert centered on the Thomsen River, one of North America’s most northerly navigable rivers. Despite sparse vegetation, it shelters an unusually intact northern ecosystem with abundant muskoxen, endangered Peary caribou, barren-ground caribou, Arctic predators, and marine mammals along the north coast. Human presence reaches from Pre-Dorset and later Inuvialuit use to Mercy Bay’s role in nineteenth-century exploration and later trapping that helped lead to Sachs Harbour.

Northwest Territories · Canada