Bank Island

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Banks Island
Banks Island
Banks Island satellite image
Banks Island satellite image
Waters Arctic Ocean
Geographical location 72 ° 51 ′  N , 122 ° 7 ′  W Coordinates: 72 ° 51 ′  N , 122 ° 7 ′  W
Location of Banks Island Banks Island
length 380 km
width 290 km
surface 70,028 km²
Highest elevation Durham Heights
730  m
Residents 122 (2006)
<1 inh / km²
main place Sachs Harbor
Map of the island
Map of the island

The Banksinsel ( English Banks Island ) is the fifth largest island in Canada , is the 24th largest island in the world and is the westernmost island in the Canadian Arctic archipelago .

It was named in honor of the famous English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and belongs to the Inuvik region of the Northwest Territories . It was discovered by Frederick William Beechey , who served as a lieutenant under the British polar explorer Sir William Edward Parry on his expedition in 1819/20.

geography

The Prince of Wales Strait , 12 to 50 km wide, separates Banks Island in the east from Victoria Island . The McClure Strait in the north separates them from Prince Patrick Island and Melville Island , and the Amundsen Gulf in the south from mainland Canada. In the west the island borders on the Beaufort Sea . It lies at about 71 ° to 75 ° north latitude and 115 ° to 126 ° west longitude , is 70,028 km² (roughly the size of Bavaria ), 400 km long and 180 to 290 km wide. The island was formerly inhabited by Inuit . Today it is largely uninhabited ( 2006 : 122 inhabitants) , apart from the staff at the Sachs Harbor Air Force Base on the southwest coast, and is only occasionally visited by trappers .

The landscape consists for the most part of lowlands, only in the east there is with the Durham Heights up to 730 m high mountains, with the vegetation tundra predominates.

fauna

The fauna consists of large herds of musk ox . The Thomsen River valley is the world's most important habitat for these animals. In addition, live polar foxes , grouse , ravens and some herds of the endangered Peary caribou on the island. In 1961, two migratory bird sanctuaries ( Banks Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary I and II ) were established, which BirdLife International also designates as Important Bird Areas NT017 and NT043. At the confluence of the Egg River with the Big River in the southwest of Banksinsel is one of the largest breeding colonies of the Lesser Snow Goose with 479,500 birds in 1995. A total of 43 different bird species temporarily live on the island. Today the Aulavik National Park protects 12,274 km² of arctic lowlands in the north of the island, including the valley of the Thomsen River, which is one of the northernmost navigable rivers in North America .

history

Inuit colonization of the greater area began before 2000 BC. The oldest archaeological finds on Banksinsel belong to the pre-Dorset culture and can be traced back to around 1500 BC. To date. These are flint scrapers, spikes of bone harpoons and needles. Add to this the bones of hundreds of musk ox. The skulls of 73 animals were found at the Umingmak site alone. Hunting took place in spring and summer, as the simultaneous presence of certain migratory birds showed.

In the period between 800 BC BC and AD 1000 can only be documented in a few places in the south of the island. The artifacts bear traces of both Eastern Arctic Dorset and Western cultures. Here, too, the hunting of musk ox played a significant role. Along with Ellesmere Island and North Greenland, Banks Island was the most important area for the animals.

Members of the Thule culture inhabited parts of the island's coastal fringes between 1000 and 1500. Their base, however, was more likely to hunt bowhead whales and ringed seals . Musk oxen were also hunted in the north on a kind of hunting expedition, so no traces of human settlement were found there.

Due to the Little Ice Age , Banksinsel was abandoned until the 17th century. From then on, several interrelated Inuit Thule groups lived on the island, which can be distinguished by their artifacts. One of these groups, the Mackenzie Inuit or Inuvialuit, left sites on the south coast that could be dated from the 17th to the mid-19th century.

European expeditions began in the early 19th century. In 1820 members of Admiral William Edward Parry's expedition sighted land southwest of Melville Island . The only sighted island was named "Banksland" in honor of Joseph Banks , the English naturalist, botanist and pioneer of the natural sciences and President of the Royal Society of London .

HMS Investigator in the pack ice, 1851

In search of survivors of the Franklin expedition , it led the British navigator Robert McClure to Banks Island in 1850. While passing the Prince of Wales Strait , his sailing ship HMS Investigator was trapped in the ice and the crew was forced to spend the winter there. When the ice receded the following spring, McClure discovered the island and, apparently unaware, referred to it on his map as Baring Island . He began to circumnavigate the island, but was again stopped by pack ice in September 1851 in Mercy Bay, a bay in the north of the island. The crew stayed there for almost three years, then the castaways went to Melville Island by sledge , where they were rescued by HMS Resolute . They left the ship to its own devices , which later sank and was rediscovered by Canadian archaeologists in 2010 using sonar devices at a depth of around eight meters.

Between 1855 and 1890, Copper Inuit from Victoria Island visited the Mercy Bay area, collecting material that McClure had left behind. They also hunted caribou and musk ox, as numerous so-called food caches show. In the 20th century, the Inuvialuit often visited Banks Island because there were large fox populations there, whose pelts were traded between the Mackenzie Delta and northern Alaska. In the course of this fur hunt, Sachs Harbor was created , the only settlement on the island. In 2006 it had 122 inhabitants.

The first grizzly-polar bear hybrid was shot on Banksinsel in 2013 (by a hobby hunter), which could be identified as such by a DNA test .

literature

  • Joachim Hahn: Settlement and sedimentation of the pre-Oorset station Umingmak I 0, Banks Island, NWT , in: Polarforschung 47 (1977) 26–37.
  • Hansjürgen Müller-Beck (Ed.): Excavations at Umingmak on Banks Island, NW T, 1970 and 1973. Preliminary Report (= Urgeschichtliche Materialhefte, 1), Tübingen 1977.
  • Charles D. Arnold: A Paleoeskimo Occupation on Southern Banks Island, NWT , in: Arctic 33 (1980) 400-426.

Web links

Commons : Banks Island  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Atlas of Canada - Sea Islands ( Memento from October 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  2. ↑ Banks Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary on IBA Canada (English)
  3. ↑ Thomsen River on IBA Canada (English)
  4. ↑ Matthew W. Betts: Zooarcheology and the Reconstruction of Ancient Human-Animal Relationships in the Arctic , in: T. Max Friesen, Owen K. Mason (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic , Oxford University Press, 2016, Pp. 81–108, here: p. 95.
  5. ↑ Peter C. Lent: Muskoxen and Their Hunters. A History , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1999, p. 65.
  6. ↑ Map ( Memento of February 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/nt/aulavik/natcul/natcul2.aspx
  8. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10793639
  9. ^ Spiegel: "HMS Investigator": Lost ship discovered in the Arctic , July 29, 2010
  10. ↑ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12738644/?GT1=8199#.UhYgCW3b0rk
  11. ↑ http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AlaskaScienceForum/article/hybrid-grizzly-polar-bear-curiosity