{"id":236496,"date":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/236496\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","slug":"it-can-be-seen-from-space-is-the-equivalent-to-8-football-fields-and-could-be-45-years-old-but-we-have-no-idea-how-many-families-call-it-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/236496\/","title":{"rendered":"It can be seen from space, is the equivalent to 8 football fields and could be 45 years old – but we have no idea how many families call it home…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things that are visible from space include The Great Pyramids of Giza, The Great Barrier Reef of Australia and \u2026 the\u00a0great beaver dam of Canada<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In northern Alberta\u2019s, Wood Buffalo National Park, the big-toothed, paddle-tailed creatures have constructed a dam\u00a0that is as long as the Burj Khalifa (the world\u2019s highest skyscraper) is tall. From end-to-end, the structure\u00a0spans\u00a0800 metres, which, for extra reference, is equivalent to eight football fields, 160 giraffes <\/a>or 533 Ariana Grandes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despites its size, however, the enormous structure is actually very hard to see. Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada\u2019s largest national park. It has an area of 45,000 km2, which is roughly the same size one Estonia, 18\u00a0Luxembourgs\u00a0or 36 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. <\/p>\n

The dam\u00a0is\u00a0in the middle of the\u00a0park,\u00a0far from any road or trail, and is surrounded by wetlands, bogs\u00a0and thick boreal forest.\u00a0It\u2019s little surprise then, that the\u00a0structure\u00a0was discovered, not by people, but by a passing satellite which spotted\u00a0it\u00a0in 2007.\u00a0Subsequent satellite images provided by NASA\u00a0were able to\u00a0confirm that\u00a0it\u00a0did not exist before\u00a01980<\/a>, which means the dam could be up to 45 years old.<\/p>\n

Beavers are ecosystem engineers<\/a>. Their activities sculpt entire environments, creating opportunities for other species to thrive. In this case, multiple generations of beavers worked together\u00a0to\u00a0build\u00a0the great dam, from\u00a0felled\u00a0wood, mud, stones and vegetation. <\/p>\n

Today, it\u00a0holds back\u00a0run-off water from the Birch Mountains, and the pond that has formed upstream is estimated to contain around\u00a070,000 cubic metres of water (around 120 million pints of beer, lemonade or milk). The entire perimeter of the dam area is about 2,000 metres and its surface area is around 70,000 square metres (you get the picture, it\u2019s big).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Images provided by Google Earth show that the dam\u00a0is a combination of two original dams and contains two lodges that are separated by around 300 metres. Noone knows how many beavers live there, but Google Earth images also show that new dams are being built.<\/p>\n

Ultimately these could join up with the \u2018monster dam\u2019 and increase its length by 50 to 100 metres over the next decade. So, the world\u2019s biggest beaver dam just keeps getting bigger. Busy beavers don\u2019t get much busier than this!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things that are visible from space include The Great Pyramids of Giza, The Great Barrier Reef of Australia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-236496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}