by Michel Comte and Jacques Lemieux Michel Comte And Jacques Lemieux Wed May
5, 7:46 pm ET
OTTAWA (AFP) A Canadian ecologist has discovered the world's largest beaver
dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it
is visible from space.
Researcher Jean Thie said Wednesday he used satellite imagery and Google Earth
software to locate the dam, which is about 850 metres (2,800 feet) long on the
southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park.
Average beaver dams in Canada are 10 to 100 metres long, and only rarely do
they reach 500 metres.
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 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.
"Several generations of beavers worked on it and it's still growing," he told
AFP in Ottawa.
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 dam 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."
North American beavers build dams to create deep, still pools of water to
protect against predators, and to float food and building materials.
A 652-meter structure in Three Forks in the US state of Montana previously held
the record for world's largest beaver dam.
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.