Alberta is home to the world's largest beaver dam AND a giant beaver statue
Alberta is known for its outrageous roadside attractions, and a giant beaver nestled in our province is certainly no exception.
The beaver fanfare doesn’t stop there — Alberta is also home to the world’s largest beaver dam, and it’s the width of the 13 hockey rinks!
Let’s look at the giant beaver statue first, which upĀ in northern Alberta sits the Beaverlodge Beaver, which arrived in the small town in the summer of 2004 to celebrate Beaverlodge’s 75th anniversary of incorporation.
Beaverlodge Beaver Statue
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Clocking in at a whopping 1,500 pounds, this beaver is hard to miss when driving in northwestern Alberta on your way up the Alaska Highway.
When you stop to pose with the beaver, you’ll find some interpretive signage that includes its history, habitat, and the behaviour of the animal, along with town information.
Oh, and the log it sits on also weighs 1,500 pounds. What a busy beaver!
The beaver is an iconic symbol in our country, officially being granted status as an emblem of Canada in 1975. So if a town with beaver is in its name, it only makes sense that it had to create such a massive sculpture dedicated to our tree-munching friends.
World’s largest beaver dam
Government of Canada
Now let us turn our attention to the natural beaver related-phenomenon in Alberta, with the world’s largest beaver dam spanning almost 800 metres, more than eight times the size of the Statue of Liberty or, to follow a more Canadian measurement system, 13 hockey rinks wide.
While the front of the dam is 775 metres in length, it actually holds as much as 70,000 cubic metres of water.
To put that size in perspective even further, the amount of water the dam holds is equivalent to around 92,000 dump trucks of water.
Government of Canada
Located in Canada’s largest national park, Wood Buffalo National Park, the area is known for its diverse wildlife. From wood bison and whooping cranes to, of course, beavers, many creatures call it home.
The entire thing is so big that it’s even visible from space, which is actually what helped it get discovered. Scientists were combing through thousands of satellite images in search of changing landscapes from climate change when they stumbled across the dam.
Its remote location, which is 22 kilometres away from the shores of Lake Claire, kept it a secret until 2009 but it’s now one of Canada’s unique claims to fame!
Would you be into pulling double duty and viewing both the world’s largest beaver dam and the massive beaver statue nestled in Alberta? Let us know in the comments below.
With files from Emma-Kilburn SmithĀ