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PANNIQTUUQ/PANGNIRTUNG - Parks Canada has begun working on the first official parks management plan for Auyuittuq National Park, replacing temporary guidelines that have been in effect since 1982.

Parks Canada recently mandated that all national parks still without a management plan had to have one in place, according to Pauline Scott, communications manager for the Nunavut field unit of Parks Canada.

"The thing with this park is it never actually completed the management plan," Scott said. "There have been several drafts over the years. There was one in 1992 that never went through the rest of the process. There have been other draft plans and so we've never reached the point where we've actually gone through the whole approval process."

Parks Canada representatives along with joint park management committees, tour operators and elders began meeting in the spring to discuss the plan.

Individuals from both Pangnirtung and Qikiqtarjuaq were invited as the park is adjacent to both communities. One of the meetings was held on the sea ice near Qikiqtarjuaq.

"There were about 15-20 people from each community," Scott said.

"We decided to go out on the ice close to the park to do the discussions because quite often getting away from the community is a good way of facilitating the conversation."

Andrew Dialla, though not a member of the Parks Canada team, served as an interpreter for elders during the meetings. He said the parks management plan will include input from the Inuit Knowledge Working Group.

"A very interesting thing they're working on right now is they have a bunch of elders that are working with Parks Canada on an Inuit knowledge project," Dialla said. "They're trying to apply knowledge of the elders into the management of the park."

He said making use of the elders' knowledge in this way is exclusive to Nunavut.

"It's quite unique in Nunavut, there's nothing like this in southern Canada like in Banff or anything like that," he said.

Scott said it was too soon to discuss exact details of the plan, but consultations will continue into the fall and will be open to the public.

She also said the recent environmental situations in Pangnirtung will certainly be one of the issues brought up during future meetings.

"We can't even begin to think of how it will affect the parks management plan right now," she said. "This situation will no doubt come up in the public consultations."