In 1969 the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) declared a national park to be a relatively large area with particular defining characteristics.^[2] A national park was deemed to be a place

National park

• with 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, educative and recreative interest or which contain a natural landscape of great beauty.
• the 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.
• visitors are allowed to enter, under special conditions, for inspirational, educative, cultural, and recreative purposes.

In 1971 these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. These include:

• a minimum size of 1,000 hectares within zones in which protection of nature takes precedence
• statutory legal protection
• a budget and staff sufficient to provide sufficient effective protection
• prohibition of exploitation of natural resources (including the development of dams) qualified by such activities as sport, fishing, the need for management, facilities, etc.

While national parks are generally understood to be administered by national governments (hence the name), in Australia national parks are run by state governments and predate the Federation of Australia.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see National park (disambiguation).

An elephant safari through the Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bengal, India

The Teide National Park in Tenerife (Spain).

A national park is a reserve of natural or semi-natural land, declared or owned by agovernment, that is restricted from most development and is set aside for human recreation and environmental protection. While ideas for national parks had been suggested previously, the first such park, Yellowstone National Park, was established in 1872 by the United States. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined National Parks as its category II type of protected areas. The largest nationalpark in the world meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which was established in 1974. According to the IUCN, there are about 7000 national parks worldwide (2010 figure).^[1]