The seven communities that once stood here bore names like Claire-Fontaine, Guimond Village, and Cap St-Louis. Their residents were mostly Mi'kmaq and Acadian descendants whose ancestors had already survived one great upheaval, the Expulsion of the Acadians in the eighteenth century. They made their living from fishing, hunting, agriculture, and forestry. Government officials looked at their modest circumstances and concluded, with breathtaking paternalism, that these people would benefit from starting their lives over elsewhere. Courses were created to help them lead what bureaucrats called "more productive lives." The residents saw it differently. They shut down the park on several occasions. The most defiant among them was Jackie Vautour, whose home was bulldozed in 1976. Two years later, he returned and squatted on the land until his death on February 7, 2021, becoming a folk hero in the process. His decades-long stand forced a reckoning: Parks Canada ultimately changed its rules so that no one would ever again be forcibly removed to create a national park.

The landscape that provoked such human conflict is genuinely extraordinary. Twenty-five kilometres of sand dunes arc along the coast, forming barrier islands that shelter warm lagoons from the open Northumberland Strait. Kelly's Beach, a long ribbon of sand accessible by boardwalk, is the park's most popular destination, but the quieter stretches are where the ecosystem reveals itself. Harbour seals and grey seals haul out on the barrier islands in colonies visible from shore. The park hosts the second-largest tern colony in North America, and its beaches provide critical nesting habitat for the endangered piping plover. Inland, bogs and boreal forest harbor moose, black bear, bobcat, and seven species of bats. The extremely rare Gulf of St. Lawrence aster once flourished here, though storms in 2006 devastated most of its colonies.

Six rivers and creeks thread through the park, including the Kouchibouguac, the Kouchibouguacis, and the Black River, each carrying fresh water through forest corridors to the coast. River otters, beavers, and muskrats work these waterways. Brook trout draw anglers to the deeper pools. In 2009, the park earned designation as a Dark-sky Preserve, an acknowledgment that its remoteness from urban light pollution makes it one of the finest places in eastern Canada for stargazing. The designation also protects nocturnal habitats for the park's wildlife, from the bats that hunt above the rivers to the owls that patrol the forest edge. On clear nights, the Milky Way arches over the dunes with a brilliance that most of the continent has lost to artificial light.

The pain of the expropriation has not faded with time. A permanent exhibit at the park's Visitor Centre tells the story of the displaced communities, and a website hosts twenty-six video portraits of people who were removed from their land. Many Acadian residents wanted the park named Claire-Fontaine, after one of their destroyed communities, rather than the Mi'kmaq name that was chosen instead. The tension in that naming dispute captures something essential about this place: it sits at the intersection of Indigenous, Acadian, and English histories, each with legitimate claims and grievances. The park's current management plan, updated in 2021, commits to co-management with Mi'kmaq partners and ongoing engagement with descendants of the expropriated residents. Over thirty Indigenous and four non-Indigenous archaeological sites within the park are now under active cultural resource management, an effort to honor what was here long before the boundaries were drawn.

Climate change presses on Kouchibouguac with particular urgency. Sea level rise and intensifying storms erode the barrier islands and dunes that define the park's character. The very features that made this coastline worth protecting are the ones most vulnerable to a warming world. Invasive species, both terrestrial and marine, add biological pressure. The park's management plan looks ahead to 2071 with strategies organized around resilience, community engagement, and year-round visitor experience. Winter programming is expanding, turning what was once a seasonal destination into something that draws people through the cold months too. But the fundamental tension remains: how to welcome visitors while safeguarding an ecosystem that is both fragile and irreplaceable, on land that was taken from people who never stopped remembering what they lost.