It includes Baffin Island and stretches almost to the North Pole. Nunavut encompasses most of the Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau, a crust of ancient rocks 500 million years old. The climate is harsh. Nunavut has tall mountains on Baffin and Ellesmere islands, but most of the territory is a flat tundra of lichen, flowers, and grasses. The most prevalent mammals are white fox, caribou, and seals.
Many birds summer on the tundra, including Canada geese.
Whitefish and Arctic char are the predominant fish species. Nunavut is rich in copper, lead, silver, zinc, iron, and other metals, but the long winters and severe climate make extraction difficult and expensive. There are few roads, and most transportation is by snowmobile and airplane. Much of Nunavut is uninhabited, although settlements stretch as far north as Ellesmere Island. In the past, the Inuit were a nomadic people who followed the seals that they relied on almost exclusively for their survival.