Vuntut National Park and the Old Crow Flats

Vuntut National Park protects 4,345 square kilometres of the far northern Yukon, immediately north of the community of [Old Crow](/blog/old-crow-remote-community). It safeguards one of the most important wetlands in North America — the **Old Crow Flats** — and the deep, living relationship between the Vuntut Gwitchin and their homeland.  ## A Park of the Vuntut Gwitchin Vuntut was created in 1995 through the **Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation Final Agreement**, and the First Nation co-manages it with Parks Canada. This is not a wilderness empty of people: it is the heart of the Vuntut Gwitchin homeland, where the community of Old Crow has hunted the [Porcupine caribou](/blog/vuntut-gwitchin-porcupine-caribou) and harvested the Flats for countless generations. The park exists to protect that living relationship as much as the land itself. Decisions about the park are made jointly. Traditional knowledge held by Vuntut Gwitchin elders is formally incorporated into management planning. The relationship between the First Nation and Parks Canada has evolved over the decades since 1995 into a genuine partnership — one studied by researchers interested in how co-management of protected areas can work when Indigenous rights are taken seriously. ## The Old Crow Flats The Flats are a vast mosaic of thousands of shallow lakes, ponds, and wetlands formed and reshaped by the freeze and thaw of permafrost. They are one of the most continentally important breeding and staging grounds for waterfowl in North America — used by enormous numbers of ducks, geese, swans, and shorebirds each year. In spring and fall the skies fill with migrating birds moving between their Arctic breeding grounds and their wintering areas across the hemisphere. The Flats are also a historically important fishery. Inconnu, northern pike, and Arctic grayling sustain both wildlife and the Vuntut Gwitchin community. Trapping — for mink, muskrat, and beaver — has been practised across the Flats for generations and remains part of the community's economy and culture. Permafrost underlies the entire landscape, and the Flats are acutely sensitive to the warming that is already reshaping the Arctic. Lakes are draining as permafrost thaws, altering the wetland mosaic that waterfowl depend on. The Vuntut Gwitchin have been documenting these changes for decades, and the park has become one of the key sites for scientific research into Arctic climate change. ## Ice Age Treasure House  The Old Crow basin is one of the richest **Pleistocene (Ice Age) fossil areas** in North America. Erosion along the rivers continually exposes the bones of mammoth, ancient horse, giant beaver, bison, and other Ice Age fauna in extraordinary numbers. The region has been central to scientific understanding of Beringia — the ice-free land that once connected Asia and North America during the glacial maxima — and to longstanding debates about when and how humans first arrived in the Americas. Artifacts from the Old Crow area include some of the oldest evidence of human presence in the Yukon. The Vuntut Gwitchin have lived alongside these fossils for thousands of years, and their oral traditions contain knowledge of the landscape's past that has proven scientifically valuable. The partnership between traditional knowledge and academic science is one of the defining features of how this park is managed. ## The Porcupine Caribou The Porcupine caribou herd — roughly 200,000 animals — migrates through the park and the surrounding region on its annual circuit between the calving grounds on Alaska's Arctic coastal plain and the boreal forest wintering range in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. The caribou do not recognize the park boundary; they move across it as they have for thousands of years. For the Vuntut Gwitchin, the caribou and the park are inseparable. Protecting the calving grounds — including through the decades-long fight against oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge across the Alaskan border — is understood as protecting the park, the people, and the relationship that gives both meaning. See the full [Vuntut Gwitchin and the Porcupine Caribou](/blog/vuntut-gwitchin-porcupine-caribou) article for the story of that relationship. ## Visiting Vuntut has **no roads, no maintained trails, no campgrounds, and no visitor services.** It is among the least-visited national parks in Canada, and intentionally so — the park's purpose is not to receive tourists but to protect a living homeland. Access is via **Old Crow**, itself reachable only by scheduled air service from Whitehorse. There is no road to Old Crow. Any trip to the park should be arranged in careful consultation with the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and Parks Canada. The community of Old Crow is small, close-knit, and values its quiet; visitors who arrive without preparation or invitation create difficulties for a community with limited resources to host them. For most people, the meaningful way to experience this country is to visit Old Crow — spend time in the community, learn from what the Vuntut Gwitchin choose to share, and understand the Flats from their edge, as the community has always understood them. Begin planning with the official [Parks Canada Vuntut](https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/yt/vuntut) page and the [Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation](https://www.vgfn.ca/). --- ## See Also on TheKlondike.net - [Old Crow: Life in Yukon's Most Remote Community](/blog/old-crow-remote-community) — the gateway to the park - [The Vuntut Gwitchin and the Porcupine Caribou](/blog/vuntut-gwitchin-porcupine-caribou) — the First Nation and their relationship with the herd - [Ivvavik National Park](/blog/ivvavik-national-park-guide) — its neighbour on the Arctic coast - [The 1993 Umbrella Final Agreement](/blog/yukon-umbrella-final-agreement-1993) — the treaty under which the park was created - [What It's Like to Drive the Dempster Highway](/blog/driving-dempster-highway) — the closest you can drive to this country