Bigger than Switzerland, with the world’s largest beaver dam and its darkest protected sky
The largest national park in Canada at 44,741 square kilometres, the second largest on Earth, and bigger than Switzerland. It was set aside in 1922 to protect the last free-roaming herd of wood bison, which stands at around 3,000 animals; the effort was nearly undone between 1925 and 1928 when some 6,700 plains bison were shipped in and brought hybridisation and disease with them. It holds the ONLY natural nesting habitat of the whooping crane, one of two known nesting sites anywhere. In 2007 somebody found the largest beaver dam in the world in here on satellite imagery, about 850 metres of it. UNESCO listed the park in 1983 for the Peace-Athabasca Delta and the bison, and in June 2013 it was named the largest dark-sky preserve on the planet. It is a long way from anywhere.
Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories
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