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May/June 2007 issue	IN THIS ISSUE: Table of Contents Feature: Torngat Mountains Feature: Urban sprawl Feature: Crumbling mountains Feature: Dust doctor The Inside Story Editor's Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Last summer, passengers aboard the cruise ship Lyubov Orlova rose at 4 a.m. and braved a stiff morning breeze on the Labrador coast to bid goodbye to two fellow travellers, Jerry and Alexandra Kobalenko. Along with their two-person kayak and gear, the Kobalenkos were lowered into Zodiacs and ferried to an island near the northern tip of Torngat Mountains National Park. They were embarking on a historic assignment for Canadian Geographic as the first official visitors to Canada's forty-second and newest national park.

Jerry is a photographer, a writer and an intrepid northern traveller. His last story for us, published in March/April 2005, was an account of his solo winter walk across the barrens of Labrador. For this latest trip, he was accompanied by Alexandra, a savvy expeditioner herself.

In the 1970s, federal government officials began discussing with the Labrador Inuit and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador the creation of a park that would include the Torngat Mountains, the highest peaks on the mainland east of the Rockies, and the spectacular cliff-walled fiords along the forbidding Labrador coast. At the time, though, Inuit had other priorities, chief among them settling their land claim. Only after the park was incorporated into the land-claim negotiations was an agreement reached. The final settlement, which included Torngat Mountains National Park, was signed on Jan. 22, 2005.

The settlement obliges Parks Canada to establish a co-operative park management board that includes two Labradorians, two residents of Nunavik, in northern Quebec, two Parks Canada representatives and an independent chair. As it happens, all seven members of the new board are Inuit. The settlement also allows Inuit to continue traditional harvesting practices in the park for subsistence purposes, to occupy seasonal camps and to take carving stone from selected sites. In essence, the settlement protects the vast Torngat wilderness area for all Canadians, engages Inuit in the management of the park and ensures that they are able to maintain their light-use presence on the land.

This seems an ideal solution. As park superintendent Judy Rowell explains, Torngat will always be a wilderness park with few visitors. Who better to patrol it and assist in monitoring its wildlife populations than its traditional occupants?

"There are no permanent facilities in the park, and we don't anticipate any," says Rowell from park headquarters in Nain.

Wilderness parks ensure that the ecosystems of unique landscapes are afforded permanent protection from development. In the case of Torngat, it is critical seasonal habitat for the 385,000-head George River caribou herd. And it is home to one of the most robust populations of polar bears in the world. The bears, which Alexandra and Jerry encountered almost daily on their journey, feast on the estimated five million harp seals that pup on the ice pack along the Labrador coast. Today, the seal population is believed to be more than five million. And that poses a tricky management issue for Rowell.

By law, visitors are not allowed to carry guns in national parks. But how, Kobalenko asks in a sidebar to his feature story in this issue, is it possible to safely visit this park — or, for that matter, a number of other northern parks — without a gun for protection? He's not easily rattled and has always travelled in polar bear country with flares, alarms and other devices for his safety. But he believes that as a last resort, a gun is essential.

"Grizzlies attack because you are in their territory," he says, "but polar bears stalk you because you are dinner."

Rowell agrees that the dangers bears pose to visitors need to be addressed in park planning.

"Jerry's trip was very timely for us," she says. "It helped us understand that we have to be careful how we promote the park and arrange safe visitor experiences. We don't want to invite people in and then deny them the right to protect themselves."

Also in this issue, Marci McDonald profiles Miriam Diamond, our Environmental Scientist of the Year; in our International Polar Year feature, Charles Montgomery investigates how climate change is causing mountains to crumble; we showcase photographer Peter Sibbald's stunning images of urban sprawl; and Alex Gillis tells the story, in our back-page "In habitat" column, of how his relatives created hell on Earth.

— Rick Boychuk

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