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BEAUFORT DELTA
A Parks Canada pilot project that aims to boost tourism to one of Canada's most remote areas is being hailed as a success.

Inuvik artist Carolyn Hunter poses for a photo in Ivvavik National Park in 2007. Visitors to the park have dramatically increased. - photo courtesy of Carolyn Hunter

Adriana Bacheschi is the visitor experience manager for Parks Canada's Inuvik office. She said Parks Canada wanted to make Ivvavik National Park more accessible to tourists.

Ivvavik, in the Yukon, is about 200 kilometres west of Inuvik and can only accessed by plane or boat.

"We manage national parks and our mandate is to protect those special places, but also to educate the public and provide visiting opportunities," Bacheschi said. "A park like that is so remotely accessible, it's something that's very difficult for people in Canada to experience."

Not only is the park remote, only certain aircraft can land in it, such as a Twin Otter. Chartering a plane from Inuvik into the park and back costs approximately $14,000, Bacheschi said.

Staff decided to embark on a pilot project where Parks Canada would share the cost of a weekend trip with visitors.

As a result, Parks Canada guided four trips into the park this summer, which cost visitors $1,000 each.

Bacheschi said while guided day trips are common, the project's goal was to determine if people were interested in trips of up to four days.

"We've tried day trips in the past and people were interested," she said. "But the cost of visiting the park for a day is the same as a few days."

A survey done in Inuvik proved the idea was well worth trying.

Bacheschi said the park usually receives about 40 visitors per year. This year, that number more than doubled to nearly 100 visitors, 40 of whom were participants in the visitor weekends.

"Our pilot idea was, let's try two (weekends) and see how they go," she said. "Then we offered the third and the fourth. It was a lot more than we expected."

The tours' primary activity was hiking with a Parks Canada guide, though participants could opt out and go fishing or hiking on their own.

"People that want to do something on their own can do that," she said. "It's been very successful and people have been very happy with the way things went."

Ivvavik and Beringia

The park encompasses an area that remained ice free throughout the last Ice Age, Bacheschi said. Part of it formed a land bridge, Beringia, that spread into eastern Siberia. The area was a haven for plants and animals during the Ice Age, including people, who lived there approximately 30,000 to 14,000 years ago.

Unique experience

Bacheschi said because there were few glaciers, Ivvavik has a landscape that is truly unique.

"The mountains in Ivvavik were mostly not glaciated, they're very unique in terms of their geological formation," she said. "The Firth River, because the last glacier didn't come through it, it's one of the oldest rivers in Canada."

Mervin Joe, cultural resource management technician with Parks Canada, has spent a lot of time in the park. A resident of Inuvik, Joe has worked for Parks Canada for the past 20 years. He said paddling the Firth River is the best way to experience Ivvavik.

"It's a good way to see the whole park right from the mountains into the valleys and canyons and right out to the Beaufort," he said. "You see that whole section of the park."

The area also had its own mini gold rush in the 1940s, Bacheschi said. A dredging machine is still located near Sheep Creek, the base camp for trips into the park.

"A lot of local people staked claims and were gold mining along the Firth River," she said.

Joe said the porcupine caribou herd migrates through the park, which usually takes place in June and again in the fall.

"They go to their calving grounds in the spring and go to their wintering areas in the fall," he said. "I've seen maybe ten thousand at one time, just in one area, in Sheep Creek."

Bacheschi said Parks Canada would like to try to time the first trip next year with the migration.

"June means caribou," she said.

The park is also home to grizzly bears, black bears and polar bears.

"It's probably the only park in Canada where you could possibly encounter the three species of North American bear," she said.

Joe said it's one of the last places on Earth where people can literally go where no one has gone before.

"You might go to places where nobody has hiked before," he said.

"It's an adventure."

Bacheschi said ideally, the future of the program would see a local tourism operator take over for Parks Canada and run guided tours into the park as part of a business.

"We act as the tour operators, but we're trying a pilot program we hope is successful and we can later entice local tour operators, especially aboriginal tour operators, to take it over," she said.

She also said there could still be opportunities for cost sharing between Parks Canada and a private tour operator.

"There is no reason why we couldn't do a cost sharing arrangement," she said. Bacheschi said it would take another few years to determine if tours would be sustainable and successful.

"It's something we plan to keep doing next year," she said. "You can't get a good sense of how it's going until you have a few years of doing it."

Joe said he supports the idea of a local tourism business continuing to take visitors to the park.

"I'd like to see that happen," he said. "Once the word gets out that it's a beautiful place to go to. More people should be able to see it with their own eyes."

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