Deep within the Wilderness, the World’s Largest Beaver Dam Endures

Wooden Buffalo Nationwide Park, the most important nationwide park in Canada, covers an space the dimensions of Switzerland and stretches from Northern Alberta into the Northwest Territories. Just one street enters it from Alberta, and one from the NWT. If not for individuals observing it from airplanes and helicopters, and satellites photographing it, little can be identified about huge components of it. The park is quite a lot of landscapes — boreal swamps, fens, bogs, black spruce forests, salt flats, gypsum karst, permafrost islands, and prairies that stretch the continent’s central plains to their northern restrict. The wooden buffalo within the park’s title are bison associated to the Nice Plains bison. On this remoteness, the buffalo descend from the unique inhabitants, and the wolves that prey on them are additionally the wild originals. Thousands and thousands of birds summer time and breed right here. The park holds one of many final remaining breeding grounds of the whooping crane.

Different superlatives and near-superlatives: the delta within the park’s southeast the place the Peace River and the Athabasca River come collectively is likely one of the largest freshwater deltas on the planet; final summer time, a few of Canada’s largest forest fires burned within the park and round it; and — simply contained in the park’s southern border — is the most important beaver dam on the planet.

Animal expertise created the most important beaver dam on the planet, however human expertise revealed it.

The dam is a couple of half-mile lengthy and within the form of an arc product of linked arcs, like a recurve bow. The media has identified about it for 16 years, and in that point no larger beaver dam has come to gentle, so it’s nonetheless often known as the largest, and scientists consider it virtually definitely is. Animal expertise created it, however human expertise revealed it. In 2007, Jean Thie, a Dutch-born panorama ecologist who lives close to Ottawa, was wanting on the newest satellite tv for pc imagery of locations he had examined through satellite tv for pc in 1973 and 1974, when he was learning permafrost. It’s exhausting to recollect, however within the early ‘70s some scientists thought the Earth is perhaps cooling. Thie’s analysis had confirmed proof of the other; the paper about permafrost melting that he revealed in 1974 is now thought-about one of many pioneering research of local weather change.

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As he appeared over Nineteen Seventies photographs taken by NASA’s Landsat satellite tv for pc and in contrast them with the newest photographs from Google Earth and different sources, he observed that in sure landscapes the proof of beavers now was all over the place. From being virtually worn out by the fur commerce between about 1600 and the 20th century, beavers had bounced again. Only one instance was a belt about 1,100 miles lengthy that prolonged into Wooden Buffalo Park. Among the many a whole bunch of beaver dams on this space Thie got here throughout one which appeared larger. He measured it and located it to be 2,790 toes lengthy, or a couple of half-mile. The 17-acre lake created by the dam reposed undisturbed, shiny and opaque in its swampy northern forest, and in the midst of the lake the small brown dot of a beaver lodge may very well be seen.


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On October 5, 2007, Thie posted the satellite tv for pc photograph of the dam on the Google Earth Group Discussion board, with textual content explaining that it was most likely the world’s largest. Seven months later, a reporter for Canadian Broadcasting Firm Radio noticed the posting and did a narrative about it. Different retailers picked up the story, and “the world’s largest beaver dam,” a phrase that’s satisfying to say and take into consideration, achieved a modest worldwide fame.

Lots of the beavers which have reestablished themselves globally are descended from beavers that have been planted by wildlife biologists. The thriving beaver inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego (one other place Thie has studied) is descended from beavers delivered to Argentina from Canada’s Saskatchewan River, who’re themselves scions of beavers transplanted from upstate New York. No reintroduction of beavers was performed in Wooden Buffalo Park. Thie believes that the beavers who constructed the dam are of authentic inventory. Just like the wooden buffalo and the wolves, they have been too distant to be worn out.

On the request of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, UNESCO has investigated environmental threats to Wooden Buffalo Nationwide Park.

The officers who run the park heard in regards to the world’s largest beaver dam due to Thie’s discovery, like all people else. Till the CBC reporter known as them for remark, they’d not identified that their park contained the world’s largest beaver dam. Not one of the park’s personnel had ever been to it, or has visited it on the bottom (or what passes for floor there), to today. Once I known as Tim Gauthier, the park’s exterior relations supervisor, he stated that he had flown over the dam many occasions however by no means stood on or close to it. He didn’t know if the water within the lake was nonetheless deep sufficient to cowl the doorway to the lodge or lodges. In these remoter areas of the park, he stated, “we are likely to let such issues regulate themselves.”

Since 1983, Wooden Buffalo Nationwide Park has been listed as a World Heritage Web site by UNESCO, the environmental and cultural company of the United Nations. In newer years, this designation has change into shaky; on the request of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, whose members collect conventional assets within the park and depend upon it for cultural survival, UNESCO has twice investigated environmental threats to the park and has come near declaring it formally endangered. Wooden Buffalo Park is now on UNESCO probation, and the governments of Canada and Alberta are supposed to repair its issues.

A North American beaver (Castor canadensis).

A North American beaver (Castor canadensis).
Rainer Erl / McPhoto / ullstein bild through Getty Photographs

The park is struggling the worst drought in its historical past. Flows are down by half in lots of locations, owing to local weather change, water diversion, poor seasonal snowpack, and dams on the Peace River, upstream in British Columbia. A hazard that appears inescapable comes from the oil sands which are being mined for crude-oil-containing bitumen, and from tailing ponds that maintain trillions of liters of mine-contaminated water. The ponds are close to the banks of the Athabasca River, simply upstream from the park boundary. They’re deadly to birds that land on them. Given the route that water flows, conservationists and native individuals concern the tailings will pollute the park ultimately. Poisonous chemical compounds have already been present in McClelland Lake, simply southeast of the park. Locals stopped taking their consuming water from the lake years in the past.

Gillian Chow-Fraser, the boreal program supervisor for the Northern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in Edmonton, travels within the park typically by helicopter, canoe, and foot. She has described the park’s atmosphere as “tremendous degraded.” Once I spoke along with her by cellphone not way back, she talked a couple of latest tailing basin leak that was not reported to the First Nations downstream of it for 9 months. In locations that used to flood often however now don’t, the land is drying out and vegetation disappearing. Although she crisscrosses the park, she has by no means seen the world’s largest beaver dam, however she’s grateful that it’s there and bringing the park consideration.

The concept of going to the world’s largest beaver dam got here to Rob Mark after studying about Thie’s discovery.

One other knowledgeable, Phillip Meintzer, conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Affiliation, advised me that he hadn’t seen the dam, both, however that the park’s issue of entry is an effective factor, in a means, as a result of it retains individuals from visiting in massive numbers and placing stress on the world. The draw back is that environmental degradation, just like the latest tailings seepage, can occur with out many watchers discovering out. Meintzer’s principal fear is that when the economic system shifts to renewables, the oil sands shall be deserted and taxpayers caught with the cleanup. What shall be performed in regards to the multi-trillion liters of poisonous tailings is unknown. “Final summer time I used to be on a visit to check water high quality in and round McClelland Lake,” he stated. “We camped by the shore, and all evening on this distant and uninhabited place we might hear the propane cannons on the close by tailings ponds firing to scare off the birds.”


So far as is thought, just one individual has ever been to the world’s largest beaver dam. In July 2014, Rob Mark, of Maplewood, New Jersey, 44 years previous on the time, reached the dam after a difficult journey. Holding the flag of the Explorers Membership, the worldwide group with headquarters in New York Metropolis, he took a photograph of himself standing on the dam. The highest of the construction was the one strong floor he had encountered for miles. After he received again, a newspaper in Edmonton did a narrative about him, and he appeared in different newspapers and a journey journal. His achievement is just like the dam in that thus far nobody has stated it isn’t distinctive.

A beaver lodge sits in the middle of a 17-acre lake created by the dam.

A beaver lodge sits in the midst of a 17-acre lake created by the dam.
Parks Canada

Mark is now a blueberry farmer in Virginia. Once I reached him by cellphone, he advised me he did solo excessive treks unsponsored and for his personal pleasure. In 2007, he crossed South America from the Pacific Ocean to the Amazon River by climbing over the Andes. The concept of going to the world’s largest beaver dam occurred to him after he examine Jean Thie’s discovery. He deliberate the trek for a number of years, and in 2011, he flew to Fort McMurray — the Alberta city, greater than 100 miles from the dam, that’s the hub of the oil sands business — to see how he might get from A to B.

His plan was to go down the Athabasca River by boat, then hike by the muskeg peatland. That proving impracticable, he returned house and determined he would come on the dam from one other route, by the use of Lake Claire, whose southwestern edge is about 10 miles from it. Crossing the lake by boat, a distance of about 25 miles, after which climbing to the dam, appeared simple sufficient. However the lake is extra like a wetter spot in a swamp than a lake. Typically it doesn’t have sufficient water for boats. Mark waited three years for that downside to enhance. In 2014 it did, and Mark went to the city of Fort Chipewyan, east of Lake Claire, and employed a person to ferry him.

The lake has no actual shore, it simply will get shallower on the edges. At a selected level Mark received out and organized for the boatman to return and choose him up there in six days. Mark famous the coordinates in his handheld GPS and advised them to the boatman. The boatman replied that he had no GPS. That was a element Mark had not considered. The boatman advised him to chop one of many close by willows and stick it in a extra conspicuous place within the swamp-lake, they usually organized to satisfy by it. Then the boatman left, and Mark started his trek.

Principally the route, which required two days of slogging, was simply swamp. The final mile to the dam took Mark 5 hours.

The mosquitos swarmed like nothing he’d seen within the Amazon. He was prepared for that and for attempting to not go loopy from their noise. The sphagnum moss islands submerged slowly underneath his weight, step-by-step, as he grasped at willows to kind of brachiate on. By wanting on the tree species proven on satellite tv for pc photographs he had plotted a route alongside comparatively larger floor, and he tried to maintain to that. Principally the route, which required two days of slogging, was simply swamp. The final mile to the beaver dam took him 5 hours.

Late within the lengthy subarctic afternoon he emerged into the clear patch of sky created by the dam’s lake, waded to the dam, and stepped onto it. The dam is not more than three toes excessive at any level. He realized that an individual seeing it up shut would by no means guess it prolonged for half a mile. To know its full dimension and the ingenuity of its building you wanted {a photograph} from area. A lone beaver appeared, checked out him, and slapped its tail. Mark received a way that his presence enraged the beaver.

Bringing out his Explorers Membership flag from his pack, he took the selfie. To be allowed to hold that flag he had needed to apply to the membership, which reviewed his plan of exploration and deemed it worthwhile. Mark grew to become the 851st explorer within the membership’s 110 years to hold the flag, becoming a member of an inventory that features Thor Heyerdahl and James Cameron. After a supper of granola and peanut butter, he hiked to some bigger spruce close by, lashed his hammock between two of them, draped the mosquito netting, and ready to spend the evening.

Rob Mark at the dam, with the beaver lodge behind him.

Rob Mark on the dam, with the beaver lodge behind him.
Rob Mark

Climbing out occupied three extra days. When he reached the lake, he couldn’t wait subsequent to the willow marker for his experience, as a result of that might imply standing thigh-deep in water. He sat on a drier patch of floor again within the bushes, too removed from the lake to see it, and listened for the engine. At mid-morning of the day appointed, he heard a sound that received louder. The boatman went proper to the unlikely willow and Mark walked by swamp to the lake and waded out to the boat, so exhausted he might barely climb in.


The world’s largest beaver dam isn’t like human dams. It doesn’t stopper a river, or perhaps a stream or rivulet. Its low half-mile barrier collects small trickles that come off a plateau known as the Birch Mountains. Alongside the margin of this comparatively larger floor, it accommodates itself to a slope of lower than two %. The gathered-up trickles have amounted to a lake, and after the beavers eat the crops that develop in it, they could relocate to a different dam and one other pond, graze that space, then transfer on once more, in a kind of crop rotation. Different dams on this beaver belt are as much as three-quarters the size of the longest dam. These lengthy, low dams could assist the beavers adapt to drought.

Locations virtually unattainable to get to undergird all of existence. In my automotive there are areas underneath the entrance seats the place, when my cellular phone falls into them, I need to virtually take the automotive aside to get it out. Beavers create hard-to-access locations which are good for them, much less so for us. Jean Thie had beavers on land he owned close to Ottawa, they usually constructed dams and made swampy ponds and lower down bushes. He received a trapper to take away them however they or different beavers got here again. Lastly, he gave up and simply put hen wire across the trunks of bushes on the property and lived with the beaver panorama.

Within the huge image, Thie is pro-beaver nonetheless. “After all, I’m not very positively minded about our personal future on the planet,” he advised me. “However I’m an optimist about beavers. Their presence improves water administration, reduces water flows, reduces the lack of runoff, and creates and improves wetlands. In drier landscapes of the long run all this may very well be of profit. I believe the worldwide flourishing of beavers is a small step in route.”

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