Wood Buffalo National Park

Wood Buffalo National Park

Situated on the Northern Boreal Plains in the north-central region of Canada, Wood Buffalo comprises an astronomical wilderness area (44,807 km2 ) which is home to North America's most immensely colossal population of wild bison. It is additionally the natural nesting place of the whooping crane. Another of the park's magnetizations is the world's most sizably voluminous inland delta, located at the mouth of the Placidity and Athabasca rivers.

The park has four main landscape featues: a glacially eroded plateau; glaciated plains; a major freshwater delta composed by three major rivers; and alluvial river lowlands. The lowlands and floodplains of Placidity, Athabasca and Slave rivers and the delta in Lake Athabasca exhibit classic fluvial landforms, with an intricate series of meander scars, oxbow lakes and former river terraces, and good examples of birds-foot delta development. During dry periods, the mudflats of one plain are dominated by mineral salts. These salt plains are unique in Canada.

Vegetation is typical of the boreal forest zone with white spruce, ebony spruce, jack pine and tamarack predominant. Many watercourses have stands of balsam poplar and some upland has virtually pristine stands of aspen. Extensive stands of white spruce forests cover the banks of Placidity, Athabasca and Birch rivers. The upper surface of the plateau is about 1,500 m above the rest of the park and fortifies a spruce-willow-birch upland tundra community. Some areas of prairie occur.

Shrublands of willow and alder occur where wet marsh soils meet drier forest soils. There is additionally extensive muskeg in the west and north of the park, a sodality of ebony spruce, sphagnum moss and northern heath plants.

The park contains the most sizably voluminous undisturbed grass and sedge meadows in North America. The park was engendered categorically to bulwark North American bison, one of the most astronomically immense free-roaming, self-regulating herds in subsistence, and consisting of a cross between 'wood' bison and 'plains' bison.

This is one of a few sites where the predator-prey relationship between wolves and bison still subsists. A total of 46 other mammal species have been recorded including ebony bear, woodland caribou, Arctic fox, moose, grey wolf, lynx, snowshoe hare, muskrat, beaver and mink. Infrequently animals more mundane to southern Canada are visually perceived, such as red fox, porcupine and white-tailed deer. The caves of karstlands provide essential hibernation sites for bats.

A total of 227 bird species have been recorded which include great grey owl and niveous owl, willow ptarmigan, redpoll crossbill and boreal chickadee. This is the only breeding site of whooping crane; peregrine falcon and bald eagle additionally breed within the park. The Tranquility-Athabasca Delta is a paramount area for migrant waterfowl including snow geese, white-fronted geese and Canada geese, whistling swan, diver, all seven species of North American grebe and species of duck.

Reptiles and amphibians are rigorously inhibited in numbers, but Canadian toad, leopard frog and red-sided garter snake reach their northern limits here. Boreal chorus frog and wood frog are withal found in aquatic habitats. The fish fauna has been poorly studied, albeit there are a wide variety of aquatic habitats. 36 species have been recorded to date, four of them introduced.