Page created on : August 13, 1999
Last updated : August 20, 2004

The Yukon's first territorial park is situated off the northern coast in the Beaufort Sea on the 100-square kilometre Herschel Island.

The island was used by American whalers as a wintering station from 1890. Inuit, missionaries and the police came, but when the RCMP post was abandoned in 1964, the last non-native left.

In July 1867, the park was created though the settlement in Inuvialuit land claims. No permanent population exists, but the native families from the Mackenzie use it as a fishing and hunting base as did theirs ancestors.

The Beaufort «Gyre» or clockwise circulation of the Beaufort Sea brings warm nutrient-rich fresh water to the island which supports the fish population and attracts seals, which in turn attracts polar bears and arctic foxes.

Seventy-six species of birds can be found including the snowy owl, ptarmigan and North America's densest breeding population of rough-legged hawks.

In addition to the arctic flora, mammals, birds and sea life, the island boasts archaeological treasures of the Thule culture (1000-1600 A.D.), people who had a sophisticated sea-hunting technology and permanent villages of houses made from stone, whalebones and turf. «Qikiqtaruk», as the Inuvialuit call Herschel Island, represents a combinaison of the natural and historic protected in this nature preserve.