SirMilik National Park

Instrumental Value :

Recreational :  Ice-fields can be traversed, mountains scaled and waterways paddled by experienced adventurers, the park also welcomes day-hikers to explore cultural sites and hoodoos. And a comfortable, multi-day floe edge trip across frozen seas is an unforgettable guided trip of a lifetime for anyone to enjoy.

Historical : The first recorded visit by Europeans to Baffin Island was made by captains Robert Bylot and William Baffin when they entered Jones Sound and Lancaster Sound in 1616. In 1818, explorers Sir John Ross and Sir William Edward Perry also passed through the area while searching for the Northwest Passage.

Religious : It is believed that the earliest people on Baffin Island were from the Pre-Dorset and Dorset cultures dating back more than three thousand years from about 1700 B.C. to A.D.1000. The ancestors of these people are believed to have originated in the Bering Strait region of Alaska prior to migrating across the Canadian arctic and into Greenland, from west to east.

Assigned Significance :

Cultural : SirMilik National Park has a rich legacy of cultural resources that can tell the story of human occupation of the area- a story that dates thousands of years ago. Thule culture persisted until the period of earliest contact with Europeans, a period that also coincided with the end of the “little ice age”. The transition from Thule to Inuit culture occurred between 1600 and 1850.

Scope- How large is the National Park :

Vegetation : (Tundra Region) The vegetation inside of the park is water sedge, white cotton grass, and tall cottongrass. The other types of grasses are Fisher’s tundra grass, the polar grass, and semaphore grass. There is mostly 360 different types of plants and grass.

Landform Region : Arctic Lowlands

For the Arctic Lowlands, the National Park is split into three areas, Bylot Island, Oliver Sound and Borden Peninsula. For Bylot it is mountains, icefields and glaciers. In the area of Oliver Sound there is a long narrow field (and fiord) with boating, hiking and camping. Last but not least is Borden Peninsula which is a plateau with with broad river valleys. Mostly inside of Sirmilik is amazing camping grounds and suburb wilderness.

Physical Spatial Influence :

Wildlife : SirMilik National Park is home to around 70 species of birds, including 42 species of breeding birds. Also the park is filled with Beluga whales, seals, walruses, Peary caribou, Arctic foxes, Arctic hares and wolves inside the National Park.

National Park : Sirmilik National Park

Climate Region :  Arctic Region