Friday, May 7, 2010
Largest
Beaver Dam
- world record
set by Canadian
Beavers
OTTAWA, Canada -- Canadian ecologist researcher Jean Thie
used satellite imagery and Google Earth software
to locate a 850 metres (2,800 feet) long beaver dam in a remote
area of northern Alberta, on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo
National Park, which sets the new world record for the Largest
Beaver Dam
.
Photo: This handout photo courtesy of
the Wood Buffalo National Park shows the world's
biggest beaver dam
. AFP ( enlarge
photo
)
The previous Guinness world record
for the Largest
Beaver Dam
was set by a 652-meter structure in Three
Forks in the US state of Montana.
Average beaver dams in Canada are 10 to
100 metres long, and only rarely do they reach 500 metres.
North American beavers build dams to create
deep, still pools of water to protect against predators, and
to float food and building materials.
First discovered in October 2007, the gigantic
dam is located in a virtually inaccessible part of the park
south of Lac Claire, about 190 kilometres (120 miles) northeast
of Fort McMurray.
Construction of the World's
Largest Beaver Dam
likely started in the mid-1970s,
said Thie, who made his discovery quite by accident while
tracking melting permafrost in Canada's far north.
Mike Keizer, spokesman for the park, said
rangers flew over the heavily forested marshlands last year
to try to "have a look." They found significant vegetation
growing on the dam itself, suggesting it's very old, he said.
"A new dam would have a lot of fresh sticks,"
Keizer explained. "This one has grasses growing on it and
it's very green."
Part of the Largest
Beaver Dam in the World
may have been created by naturally
felled trees, and the beavers "opportunistically filled in
the gaps."
Thie said he recently identified two smaller
dams sprouting at either side of the main dam. In 10 years,
all three structures could merge into a mega-dam measuring
just short of a kilometer in length, he said.
The region is flat, so the beavers would
have had to build a massive structure to stem wetland water
flows, Thie said, noting that the dam was visible in NASA
satellite imagery from the 1990s.
"It's a unique phenomenon," he said. "Beaver
dams are among the few animal-made structures visible from
space."
Thie said he also found evidence that beavers
were repopulating old habitats after being hunted extensively
for pelts in past centuries.
"They're invading their old territories
in a remarkable way in Canada," he said. "I found huge dams
throughout Canada, and beaver colonies with up to 100 of them
in a square kilometer."
"They're re-engineering the landscape,"
he said.
Subscribe to our RSS
News feed
to receive updates.
Related world records
:
Deepest
undersea volcanic vents
- Caribbean "black smokers" set world record
Largest
fresh water lake without an island-North Muskoka Lake sets
a world record
Largest
Naturally Frozen Ice Rink - Lipno lake sets world record
Friday, May 7, 2010
