Sirmilik

Sirmilik lies at the northern end of Baffin Island, in Nunavut, and is made up of three separate territorial components. Oliver Sound, south of Pond Inlet, is a long, narrow fjord hemmed in by high cliffs, glaciers and ice caps. The Borden Peninsula is an extensive plateau dissected by broad river valleys and includes Baillarge Bay, with its seabird colony. And Bylot Island is a spectacular assembly of rugged mountains, ice fields and glaciers. The park was established in 1999, coinciding with the creation of Nunavut.

Bylot is the biological heart of the whole and was protected long before the park: it was declared a migratory bird sanctuary in 1965 and is still managed jointly with the Canadian Wildlife Service because of the importance of its seabird colonies, among them those of Brünnich's guillemot and black-legged kittiwake, which occupy the coastal cliffs. The island's southern plain is a genuine polar oasis: its wetlands reach a productivity and a plant richness that are exceptional for an Arctic environment, with more than 160 plant species, more than 15 mammal species and more than 70 bird species.

One of the world's largest breeding colonies of greater snow goose is found there: more than a hundred thousand birds spend the summer on Bylot, which makes the geese the island's most abundant herbivores, and the wetlands of the Qarlikturvik valley are their main brood-rearing area. Southern Bylot is also one of the best-studied long-term ecological monitoring sites in the Canadian Arctic. Caribou, Arctic fox, wolf, Arctic hare and, in the coastal areas, polar bear complete the park's fauna.