See also:

Road Traffic
 
Air Traffic

Arctic Borderlands Ecological Knowledge Co-op

What is happening?

• This graph shows the year to year changes in tourists visiting protected areas in the region. Tourist activity is relatively low compared to southern areas and the visitor season tends to be quite short.
• Herschel Island Territorial Park and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska receive the largest number of visitors. Ivvavik National Park receives just over a hundred visitors per year. Vuntut National Park has received few visitors so far and numbers of one or two per year hardly show up on the graph (see arrows).

Why is it important?

• To reach any of these parks requires access by air or boat so an increase in visitors brings with it a potential increase in disturbance associated with transportation activity.

Technical Notes

• Numbers of visitors at Herschel Island have been estimated from guest book signatures (Andy Tardiff, Sandy Koep and Dave Ledret, personal communication).
• The numbers estimated for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge include guided visitors, guided hunters and "unguided visitors" that arrive by air taxi. These numbers do not include subsistence users travelling in the area.