Canada

A northern Manitoba tour advertising a trip to an ancient Inuit hunting camp is raising concerns that tourists' presence there could damage an "irreplaceable" cultural and historical site, and the critical animal habitats around it.

The company behind the tour describes it as a "life-changing" adventure with access to Arctic animals in an "awe-inspiring northern wilderness largely untouched by human existence" and visits to what it calls "the Hudson Bay version of Stonehenge — ancient Inuit building remains and hunting grounds thousands of years old."

However, the trip — advertised on Lazy Bear's website at $16,800 per person — has caught the attention of more than just tourists, prompting conservation and hunting groups to voice concerns to the province about the overnight visits' potential to disrupt the areas included.

"You wouldn't just build, you know, a hotel right on the Grand Canyon," said Christopher Debicki, vice-president of policy development for the conservation group Oceans North, which was among the groups that recently wrote to provincial Natural Resources Minister Jamie Moses about the tours.