Wood Buffalo National Park
national park in Canada
Wood Buffalo National Park is the largest national park of Canada at 44,741 km2 (17,275 sq mi). It is in northeastern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories. Larger in area than Switzerland, it is the second-largest national park in the world. The park was established in 1922 to protect the world's largest herd of free-roaming wood bison. They became hybridized after the introduction of plains bison. The population is currently estimated at 3,000. It is one of two known nesting sites of whooping cranes.
The park ranges in elevation from 183 m (600 ft) at the Little Buffalo River to 945 m (3,100 ft) in the Caribou Mountains. The park headquarters is in Fort Smith, with a smaller satellite office in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. The park contains one of the world's largest fresh-water deltas, the Peace-Athabasca Delta, formed by the Peace, Athabasca and Birch rivers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wood Buffalo National Park” as national park in Canada. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as national park in Canada. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q391338. VIAF identifies the subject as 146500056. The Library of Congress control number is sh87002592. Authority coordinates are 59.383, -112.983. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1922.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Wood Buffalo National Park”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Wood Buffalo National Park primary sources, Wood Buffalo National Park archive and Wood research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wood Buffalo National Park”?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Wood Buffalo National Park” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.