Canada’s largest national park is massive. It’s so big, in fact, that it’s larger than the entire country of Switzerland. Wood Buffalo National Park is 44,741 km2, or around 17,274 square miles. Switzerland, meanwhile, is just 15,940 square miles. Despite its size, Wood Buffalo National Park only sees a few thousand visitors every year.
Wood Buffalo National Park was initially established in 1922 to protect the free-roaming bison herds of the area. Today it supports and protects many unique natural and cultural resources, ranging from the diverse ecosystems to the traditional activities of Aboriginal residents.
As a World Heritage Site, Wood Buffalo National Park does attract visitors from around the world, but it’s not nearly as popular as Canada’s Banff National Park, Jasper National Park, or others. The park is home to one of the largest free-roaming and self-regulating bison herds in the world, the last remaining natural nesting area for the endangered whooping crane, the Peace-Athabasca Delta, one of the largest inland freshwater deltas in the world, unique salt plants, and much, much more.
It’s also home to the world’s largest beaver dam, stretching an enormous 800 meters long, or 2,624 feet, from end-to-end. It holds back run-off water from the Birch Mountains in the southernmost end of Wood Buffalo National Park, creating a pond that contains about 70,000 cubic meters, or around 18,492,044 gallons, of water. That’s undeniably impressive.
