National park

A national park is a park or an area of land officially recognized and protected by a nation's government.^[1] National parks are often made to protect the animals that live inside them or the land itself. There are many National Parks in the world.

The first one established (in 1872) was the United States Yellowstone National Park. It was the first national park in the world.^[2] But the idea of protecting areas from human development was proposed years earlier. American painter George Catlin offered the idea during the 1830s.^[2]

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 national park 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).^[3]

1. ↑ "national-park noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com". www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} "THIS IS AMERICA — National Park System - 2003-08-26". VOA. Retrieved 2020-08-18.
3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-07-28. Retrieved 2010-10-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)