Wood Buffalo National Park, located in northeastern Alberta and southern Northwest Territories, is the largest national park in Canada at 44,807 km2 (17,300 sq mi). It is also the largest national park in North America and the second largest in the world. The park was established in 1922 to protect the world's largest herd of free roaming Wood Bison, currently estimated at more than 5,000. It is the only known nesting site of whooping cranes.
The park ranges in elevation from 183 m (600 ft) at the Little Buffalo River to 945 m (3,100 ft) in the Caribou Mountains. The park headquarters is located in Fort Smith, with a smaller satellite office in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. The park contains one of the world's largest fresh water deltas, the Peace-Athabasca Delta, formed by the Peace, Athabasca and Birch Rivers. It is also known for its karst sinkholes in the north-eastern section of the park. Wood Buffalo is located directly north of the Athabasca Oil Sands.
This area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 for the biological diversity of the Peace-Athabasca Delta, one of the world's largest freshwater deltas, as well as the population of wild bison.
Read more about Wood Buffalo National Park: Conservation, Transportation, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words wood, buffalo, national and/or park:
“My mother said that I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood,”
—Unknown. Gypsies in the Wood (l. 12)
“As I started with her out of the city warmly enveloped in buffalo furs, I could not but think how nice it would be to drive on and on, so that nobody should ever catch us.”
—Anthony Trollope (18151882)
“I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.”
—Howard Barker (b. 1946)
“Borrow a child and get on welfare.
Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and dont talk
back ...”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)