Beaver City

You can see it from space,

which is pretty Science-is-cool-ish all by itself.

...That we can see things from space, I mean.

Parks Canada on Wednesday released photographs of the world's biggest beaver dam, which is so large it can be seen from space.

Hidden in the remote southeast corner of Alberta's Wood Buffalo National Park, the dam stretches for more than 850 metres -- longer than eight football fields stretched end-to-end, or one and a half times the height of the CN Tower.

Park spokesman Mike Keizer said officials learned about the dam two years ago and organized a flyover to see if there was any way to inspect the enormous structure.

They found it deep in the boreal forest of the Birch Mountains, halfway between the south tip of Lac Clair and the park's southern border.

"It's in one of the most remote areas you'll find in this park," he said. "It is quite literally in the middle of nowhere -- there are no roads, no navigable streams to it. The only way we can see right now is to land a helicopter there, and then take a two-day hike in."

Keizer said the beavers likely capitalized on a natural dam made up of old, dead and burned trees that got knotted up during a flood.

He suspects beavers have been working on it for some time because it is overgrown with vegetation -- and because progressive satellite images from as far back as the 1970s show it expanding year after year.

There's something about beavers. Everybody likes them.