Anticosti Island

Anticosti is about two hundred and twenty kilometres long with roughly two hundred residents and something like one hundred and sixty thousand white-tailed deer, introduced by the French chocolate manufacturer Henri Menier who bought the island in 1895 and released two hundred and twenty of them. The deer have since eaten out the understorey and reshaped the forest. In 2023 UNESCO listed the island for its fossil record: the limestone cliffs and river canyons hold the most complete record anywhere of the Ordovician-Silurian extinction, the first of the five great mass extinctions, around four hundred and forty-seven million years ago.

What you actually see

• The fossil cliffs - the world's best record of the first mass extinction.
• The deer - around 160,000 on an island with about 200 people.
• Vauréal Falls - a seventy-six metre fall in a canyon.
• The shipwrecks - remains of some four hundred wrecks around the coast.

When to go

June to September; access is by air or supply ship and winter is essentially closed to visitors. Deer hunting season in autumn is the island's main economy and books out.

Honest expectations

Getting there is expensive and weather-dependent. Roads on the island are gravel and a four-wheel drive is usually needed. Services are minimal and mostly tied to hunting outfitters.

Nearby

The Mingan Archipelago lies north; Sept-Îles is on the mainland.