Nahanni National Park

• Official Name: Nahanni National Park
• Location: Northwest Territories, Canada
• Year of Inscription: 1978

Nahanni National Park encompasses a 470,000-hectare area in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is remote—accessible only by boat or float plane—and undeveloped. Once home to an Indigenous population that disappeared centuries ago, the area attracted some fortune hunters in the nineteenth century. In 1978, it became one of the first four natural sites to be given United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site status.

The designation recognizes the site’s wide range of geologic and geomorphological features. In addition to its namesake, South Nahanni River, one of the most impressive undeveloped rivers on the North American continent, the park is home to numerous other rivers and streams of virtually every designation used by scientists to describe North American waterways. It also includes deep canyons cut by these rivers through large mountain ranges, complex systems of underground caverns, hot springs, Glacier Lake, and Virginia Falls, one of the most remarkable falls in North America. The mountains within it are part of the Continental Divide, separating the Northwest from the Yukon areas.

Since the park was made a World Heritage Site, 2.5 million additional hectares surrounding it were added to create Nahanni National Park Reserve. While this did not change the World Heritage site, it did provide an additional buffer around the UNESCO-protected area. Done in cooperation with Canadian First Nations people who live in surrounding areas, the creation of the preserve helps to protect the nearly pristine nature of the World Heritage site. Although visitors are allowed, the park’s remote nature limits access to outsiders, and the area has no permanent residents. This protects the area’s natural resources and provides an extraordinary opportunity for scientists to study the geology and ecology of the area. It is also home to more than forty species of mammals and about one hundred and eighty species of bird life.

History

Scientists believe that three geologic events led to the formation of the unique and varied landscape that is part of Nahanni National Park. First, the area was covered by ocean waters that deposited 6,000 meters, or nearly 20,000 feet, of sedimentary rock. The deposits include mudstone, sandstone, and shale, plus dolomite and limestone derived from dissolved minerals and the remains of marine animals. The next event started when underground volcanos disgorged molten rock, forcing the ground above it to move and shift. This upward thrust helped form several mountain ranges, including the Selwyn and Mackenzie Mountains and the Ragged Range. Finally, glacial action throughout the park area, combined with erosion, gave shape to the park’s landscape.

For thousands of years, the area was home to the Dene Indigenous people. The name “Nahanni” comes from the Dene name for the area, Nahʔa Dehé, which means “river of the land of the Nahʔa.” The Dene lived near the Mackenzie River. According to their own oral history and archaeological evidence, the Dene were hunter-gatherers who found a way to survive in an area that is frigidly cold in winter and flooded in the spring and early summer. They lived and traveled in small extended-family groups and lived off the land, following their preferred game as it migrated. Although the small family groups mostly stayed to themselves, the Dene would come together in larger groups periodically for trade and community celebrations. At these, they shared customs such as dancing, games, feasting, and ceremonies.

While the Dene were largely peaceful, the neighboring Naha Indigenous people were more warlike. They sometimes descended from the mountains where they lived to attack the Dene. When the Dene grew tired of this, their oral histories say, they planned a sneak attack on the Naha. After a reconnaissance mission determined their location, the Dene snuck up on the Naha camp in a secluded mountainous area. When they began the attack, however, they found that the camp was abandoned. Based on reports of a new Indigenous group that suddenly appeared in a desert area far to the south just after this time, along with similarities between the Dene and the Navajo Indigenous nation in the United States, some experts believe the Naha were the ancestors of the Navajo people.

The appearance of European settlers led to the construction of trading posts in the area. Over time, the Dene stopped following migrating animals and began creating settlements near these trading posts. During the 1800s, hunting and trapping furs for sale became a major occupation for the Dene. While some conducted all their transactions at the local trading posts, others would construct ingenious boats made of up to ten moose skins stretched over a pole frame. After sailing down the Nahanni River, the Dene would sell even the skins that made up their boats and use pack dogs to haul home their purchases and equipment.

The danger and difficulty of reaching the area did not deter fortune seekers during the Klondike Gold Rush in the late nineteenth century. Gold miners traveled to the area to try their luck on the Nahanni River, though it does not appear to have yielded any gold. In contemporary times, few tourists brave the difficult and expensive journey to visit the area.

The Nahanni area was established as a national park in 1976. In 1978, it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. It was one of the first four natural sites to be so designated. These sites receive the designation based on extraordinary geological or natural phenomena, ecosystems, or biodiversity.

Significance

Nahanni State Park is widely recognized for the diversity of its geological formations. Every form of river and stream known in North America appears within its confines. They provide a living laboratory of fluvial geomorphology, or the interaction of the shapes of rivers, the water within them, and the sediment that they contain and how these factors change the landscape. The ongoing action of underground molten rock continues to shape the land in portions of the park through tectonic uplift, while the land folding effects of continental drift are evident in some areas.

The park also contains examples of karst landforms, or areas where water seeping into the ground changes the geography above and below ground. Nahanni National Park also includes many hot springs and well-developed cave systems. The aboveground rivers and waters of Nahanni provide exciting white-water rafting opportunities that draw rafting enthusiasts to ride through four canyons and a series of rapids and whirlpools. The South Nahanni River ends in a spectacular waterfall, Virginia Falls, which plummets 96 meters, or 315 feet, about twice the drop of Niagara Falls.

Other features of the park were carved by glacial activity, and some glacial formations still exist in the Mackenzie Mountains and the Ragged Range. The geological diversity of the park is displayed in the differences between granite peaks rising near alpine meadows in an area known as Cirque of the Unclimbables and the sandstone, limestone, and shale hills found in the Funeral and Headless Ranges and Tlogotsho and Liard Plateaus. Geologists have referred to a limestone area in the park’s northern watershed as the most important subarctic karst that has been found. An ice cave with tunnels spanning 1,900 meters known as Grotte Valerie is considered one of the finest on Earth.

More than a thousand types of plants can be found in the landscape, which includes areas of Nearctic boreal forest and Nearctic alpine tundra. The plant diversity here is richer than anywhere else in the Pacific Northwest, owing to the unique combination of geological features such as hot springs, waterfall mist areas, and unglaciated areas. This plant life helps support an equally diverse animal population, including grizzly and black bears, beavers, gray wolves, otters, wolverines, moose, caribou, Dall sheep, mountain goats, lynx, and white-tail deer, many of whom hibernate to survive the cold winters. Falcons, gold and bald eagles, and trumpeter swans are among the one hundred and seventy-plus species of bird found in the area, and at least sixteen types of fish can be found in its rivers, streams, and lakes. This extensive diversity of geology, geomorphology, plant, and animal life, along with its virtually untouched natural state, makes it a valuable area to conserve and to study.

In the twenty-first century, the government of Canada has pursued shared governance and stewardship of Nahanni National Park with Canada’s First Nations people. In 2022, the Ndahecho Gondié Gháádé Agreement was signed between Parks Canada, the Nahʔą Dehé Dene Band, and Dehcho First Nations to ensure this collaborative effort. In October 2024, Parks Canada unveiled a new national Indigenous Stewardship Policy that addressed the importance of this collaborative effort across all national parks in Canada, including Nahanni.

Bibliography

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“Nahanni National Park.” World Heritage Datasheet, May 2011, world-heritage-datasheets.unep-wcmc.org/datasheet/output/site/nahanni-national-park. Accessed 7 Dec. 2024.

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Dulewich, Jenna. “New Nahanni Agreement Signals Historic Step to Indigenous Land Governance.” CBC, 3 Oct. 2022, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nahanni-agreement-indigenous-land-governance-1.6604310. Accessed 7 Dec. 2024.