Friday, September 05, 2008

Canada Creates New Arctic Wilderness Preserves

Canada is setting aside three parts of Baffin Island as National Wildlife Areas. The areas include two Important Bird Areas at Qaqulluit (Cape Searle) and Akpait (Reid Bay), and another site at Niginganiq (Isabella Bay).

The Niginganiq (nee geen ga nik) National Wildlife Area protects key bowhead whale habitat, and the Akpait (ak pa eet) and Qaqulluit (ka koo loo eet) National Wildlife Areas near Broughton Island are inhabited by seabirds including one of Canada's largest colonies of thick-billed murres and Canada's largest colony of northern fulmars.

These areas also are inhabited by walruses, seals and polar bears.
This sounds like very good news for breeding seabirds.