National park
A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea: the conservation of 'wild nature' for posterity and as a symbol of national pride.
An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined "National Park" as its Category II type of protected areas. According to the IUCN, 6,555 national parks worldwide met its criteria in 2006. IUCN is still discussing the parameters of defining a national park.
While this type of national park had been proposed previously, the United States established the first "public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people", Yellowstone National Park, in 1872. Although Yellowstone was not officially termed a "national park" in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. However, the Tobago Main Ridge Forest Reserve, and the area surrounding Bogd Khan Uul Mountain are seen as the oldest legally protected areas, predating Yellowstone by nearly a century.
National parks are almost always open to visitors.
Definitions
In 1969, the IUCN declared a national park to be a relatively large area with the following defining characteristics:- One or several ecosystems not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation, where plant and animal species, geomorphological sites and habitats are of special scientific, educational, and recreational interest or which contain a natural landscape of great beauty;
- Highest competent authority of the country has taken steps to prevent or eliminate exploitation or occupation as soon as possible in the whole area and to effectively enforce the respect of ecological, geomorphological, or aesthetic features which have led to its establishment; and
- Visitors are allowed to enter, under special conditions, for inspirational, educative, cultural, and recreative purposes.
- Minimum size of 1,000 hectares within zones in which protection of nature takes precedence
- Statutory legal protection
- Budget and staff sufficient to provide sufficient effective protection
- Prohibition of exploitation of natural resources qualified by such activities as sport, hunting, fishing, the need for management, facilities, etc.
- Swiss National Park, Switzerland: IUCN Ia – Strict Nature Reserve
- Everglades National Park, United States: IUCN Ib – Wilderness Area
- Victoria Falls National Park, Zimbabwe: IUCN III – National Monument
- Vitosha National Park, Bulgaria: IUCN IV – Habitat Management Area
- New Forest National Park, United Kingdom: IUCN V – Protected Landscape
- Etniko Ygrotopiko Parko Delta Evrou, Greece: IUCN VI – Managed Resource Protected Area
In many countries, including Indonesia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, national parks do not adhere to the IUCN definition, while some areas which adhere to the IUCN definition are not designated as national parks.
History
Early references
In 1810, the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a "sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy." The painter George Catlin, in his travels through the American West, wrote during the 1830s that the Native Americans in the United States might be preserved "... in a magnificent park... A nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty!"Starting in 1735 the Naples government undertook laws in order to protect Natural areas, which could be used as a game reserve by the royal family; Procida was the first protected site; the difference between the many previous royal hunting preserves and this one, which is considered to be closer to a Park rather than a hunting preserve, is that Neapolitan government already considered the division into the present-day wilderness areas and non-strict nature reserves.
First efforts: Hot Springs, Arkansas and Yosemite Valley
The first effort by the U.S. Federal government to set aside such protected lands was on 20 April 1832, when President Andrew Jackson signed legislation that the 22nd United States Congress had enacted to set aside four sections of land around what is now Hot Springs, Arkansas, to protect the natural, thermal springs and adjoining mountainsides for the future disposal of the U.S. government. It was known as Hot Springs Reservation, but no legal authority was established. Federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877.John Muir is today referred to as the "Father of the National Parks" due to his work in Yosemite. He published two influential articles in The Century Magazine, which formed the base for the subsequent legislation.
President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on 1 July 1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias to the state of California. According to this bill, private ownership of the land in this area was no longer possible. The state of California was designated to manage the park for "public use, resort, and recreation". Leases were permitted for up to ten years and the proceeds were to be used for conservation and improvement. A public discussion followed this first legislation of its kind and there was a heated debate over whether the government had the right to create parks. The perceived mismanagement of Yosemite by the Californian state was the reason why Yellowstone, at its establishment six years later, was put under national control.
First national park in the United States: Yellowstone
In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the United States' first national park, being also the world's first national park. In some European and Asian countries, however, national protection and nature reserves already existed, such as a part of the Forest of Fontainebleau.Yellowstone was part of a federally governed territory. With no state government that could assume stewardship of the land, the federal government took on direct responsibility for the park, the official first national park of the United States. The combined effort and interest of conservationists, politicians and the Northern Pacific Railroad ensured the passage of enabling legislation by the United States Congress to create Yellowstone National Park. Theodore Roosevelt and his group of conservationists, the Boone and Crockett Club, were already an active campaigners, and so influential, as good stump speakers were highly necessary in the pre-telecommunications era, was highly influential in convincing fellow Republicans and big business to back the bill. Yellowstone National Park soon played a pivotal role in the conservation of these national treasures, as it was suffering at the hands of poachers and others who stood at the ready to pillage what they could from the area. Theodore Roosevelt and his newly formed Boone and Crockett Club successfully took the lead in protecting Yellowstone National Park from this plight, resulting in laws designed to conserve the natural resources in Yellowstone and other parks under the Government's purview.
American Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner wrote:
National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.
International growth of national parks
The first area to use "national park" in its creation legislation was the U.S.'s Mackinac National Park, in 1875.Following the idea established in Yellowstone and Mackinac, there soon followed parks in other nations. In Australia, what is now Royal National Park was established just south of Sydney on 26 April 1879, becoming the world's second official national park Since Mackinac lost its national park status, Royal National Park is, by some considerations, the second oldest national park now in existence.
Rocky Mountain National Park became Canada's first national park in 1885. New Zealand established Tongariro National Park in 1887.
In Europe, the first national parks were a set of nine parks in Sweden in 1909, followed by the Swiss National Park in 1914. Africa's first national park was established in 1925 when Albert I of Belgium designated an area of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo centred on the Virunga Mountains as the Albert National Park. In 1926, the government of South Africa designated Kruger National Park as the nation's first national park, although it was an expansion of the earlier Sabie Game Reserve established in 1898 by President Paul Kruger of the old South African Republic, after whom the park was named. Argentina became the third country in the Americas to create a national park system, with the creation of the Nahuel Huapi National Park in 1934, through the initiative of Francisco Moreno.
After World War II, national parks were founded all over the world. The United Kingdom designated its first national park, Peak District National Park, in 1951. This followed perhaps 70 years of pressure for greater public access to the landscape. By the end of the decade a further nine national parks had been designated in the UK. Europe has some 359 national parks as of 2010. The Vanoise National Park in the Alps was the first French national park, created in 1963 after public mobilization against a touristic project.
In 1971, Lahemaa National Park in Estonia was the first area to be designated a national park in the former Soviet Union.
In 1973, Mount Kilimanjaro was classified as a National Park and was opened to public access in 1977.
In 1989, the Qomolangma National Nature Preserve was created to protect 3.381 million hectares on the north slope of Mount Everest in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. This national park is the first major global park to have no separate warden and protection staff—all of its management being done through existing local authorities, allowing a lower cost basis and a larger geographical coverage. It includes four of the six tallest mountains in the world: Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, and Cho Oyu. The QNNP is contiguous to four Nepali national parks, creating a transborder conservation area equal in size to Switzerland.
National parks services
The world's first national park service was established May 19, 1911, in Canada. The Dominion Forest Reserves and Parks Act placed the dominion parks under the administration of the Dominion Park Branch, within the Department of the Interior. The branch was established to "protect sites of natural wonder" to provide a recreational experience, centred on the idea of the natural world providing rest and spiritual renewal from the urban setting. Canada now has the largest protected area in the world with 450,000 km2 of national park space.Even with the creation of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and nearly 37 other national parks and monuments, another 44 years passed before an agency was created in the United States to administer these units in a comprehensive way – the U.S. National Park Service. The 64th United States Congress passed the National Park Service Organic Act, which President Woodrow Wilson signed into law on 25 August 1916. Of the sites managed by the National Park Service of the United States, only 61 carry the designation of National Park.
Notable parks
The largest national park in the world meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which was established in 1974 and is 972,000 km2 in area.The smallest official national park in the world is Isles des Madeleines National Park. Its area of just was established as a national park in 1976.