Saturday, May 8, 2010

Great Canadian Beaver Dam

Has anyone read or heard about this monster of a dam some beavers have been building since the 1970's? I heard something about it earlier this week and didn't pay too much attention to it right away, that is until I heard it was over 3 football fields long! I decided to do some research on it when I heard that, as it seemed far fetched when I first heard it.

From what I have found out, this beaver dam is located in Wood Buffalo National Park which is in Alberta Canada. It's being called the worlds largest beaver dam as it's 2,788 feet long (850 meters). That is HUGE in my department! The only way to see the dam is by air, as there is nowhere to land by plane near it, and it's so far out in the middle of nowhere, that no one can get to it that easily, as most of the land is wetlands.

The dam had been constructed from thousands of trees, and if you know anything about dams that us humans have built, it's twice the length of the Hoover Dam, which is on the Nevada/Arizona border. The beaver dam can also be seen from space.


Finding pictures of this dam has been difficult and that proves it's hard to get to it. I have found a few small pictures of it using Google search and that's the best I have found so far.


These pictures might not look like much, but you have to remember that this is a wetlands dam. They are a little different than river dams, but still, look at all the trees the beavers have taken down to make this dam of theirs.

I think it's awesome looking, but it's bad news for anything downstream of it though.

1 comment:

  1. Wow that is huge! I never realized beavers could take down a whole tree before.

    ReplyDelete