'Seeing is believing': VR project immerses viewers in climate change on Yukon's Herschel Island

Surrounded by chirping birds, buzzing mosquitoes and waves gently lapping on the shore, viewers travel through time, witnessing a permafrost thaw slump, rising floodwaters and shrubs take over Qikiqtaruk or Herschel Island.

The virtual reality project Qikiqtaruk: Arctic at Risk is transporting people to Yukon's northernmost point without them ever having to leave home.

Using real visuals and sounds, including the cracking and popping of permafrost thaw, the National Geography Society-funded project provides an immersive experience into the effects of climate change on the island in the Canadian Arctic.

"There's a lot of changes that I've seen over my 20 years working on Herschel," said Richard Gordon, senior park ranger for Qikiqtaruk Territorial Park with Yukon Parks.

Gordon said the coast is rapidly eroding, ice is going out earlier and it's getting more difficult for elders to read the weather when travelling.

He said black guillemots, with the island home to the largest colony of the seabirds in the western Arctic, are also declining as there are fewer of the fish they feed on.

Gordon said the VR project aims to help youth, tourists and others understand what is happening on Qikiqtaruk first-hand, and the importance of working with researchers on management decisions.

"It really gives you a good reality as to what is happening with climate change as it's happening," he said.

"If you could see it happening on a small island within your homeland, it's happening all along that North Slope coast."

Qikiqtaruk, which is approximately 116 square kilometres and located five kilometres off the north coast of Yukon in the Beaufort Sea, is an important cultural heritage site with Inuvialuit using the island for thousands of years.

It's home to a variety of animals and plants including Porcupine caribou, Arctic terns and Arctic lupine.

In the late 1800s, the island became the main base for commercial whalers in the region and a Euro-American settlement was established at Pauline Cove.

The RCMP also established one of their first detachments in the Arctic on the island in 1903, hiring their first special constable there in 1909.

Gordon, who is Inuvialuit, said when he was a kid, his family lived off muskox, caribou, Arctic char and herring from the island and Indigenous people continue to harvest in the area today.