Wood Buffalo National Park Canada

Wood Buffalo National Park is situated on the plains in the north-central region of Canada; the park is home to North America's largest population of wild bison. It is also the natural nesting place of the whooping crane. Another of the park's attractions is the world's largest inland delta, located at the mouth of the Peace and Athabasca rivers. Wood Buffalo National Park is an outstanding example of ongoing ecological and biological processes, encompassing some of the largest undisturbed grass and sedge meadows left in North America, and it sustains the world's largest herd of wood bison, a threatened species. The park's huge tracts of boreal forest also provide crucial habitat for a diverse range of other species, including the threatened whooping crane. The continued evolution of a large inland delta, salt plains and gypsum karst add to the park's outstanding values.

Continent: North America

Country: Canada

Category: Natural

Criterion: (VII)(IX) (X)

Date of Inscription: 1983

Salt plains and gypsum karst

The great concentrations of migratory wildlife are of world importance and the rare and superlative natural phenomena include a large inland delta, salt plains and gypsum karst that are equally internationally significant.

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The Great Plains-Boreal grassland ecosystem

Wood Buffalo is the most ecologically complete and largest example of the entire Great Plains-Boreal grassland ecosystem of North America, the only place where the predator-prey relationship between wolves and wood bison has continued, unbroken, over time.

Wood Buffalo contains the only breeding habitat in the world for the whooping crane, an endangered species brought back from the brink of extinction through careful management of the small number of breeding pairs in the park. The park's size (4.5 million ha), complete ecosystems and protection are essential for in-situ conservation of the whooping crane.

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