Canada Guide
The North
Wood Buffalo National Park
Straddling the border between Alberta and the Northwest Territories, WOOD BUFFALO NATIONAL PARK is bigger than Switzerland, making it Canada's largest national park and the world's second-largest protected environment (the largest is in Greenland). Though wild and vast in extent, the park is limited to low hills, lakes, grasslands, boreal forest, salt plains and marsh. These drain into the Peace and Athabasca rivers and then into Lake Claire, forming one of the world's largest freshwater deltas in the process. To the casual visitor the landscape is likely to be a disappointment – there are no real "sights" or scenic set pieces to compare with, say, the Rockies – but for dedicated naturalists, or those who are prepared to spend time (and money) letting the landscapes get under their skin, the park holds much of interest, embracing North America's finest karst (limestone) scenery, classic swaths of coniferous forest and rare salt-plain habitats.