II.

Origins

The concept of creating national parks and nature reserves developed in the early 19th century in response to increasing industrialization that had begun to cause large-scale damage or destruction to natural environments in western Europe and North America. Many heavily populated countries already had urban parks and public gardens, while some rural areas had long been reserved as hunting grounds or private estates by monarchs and nobles. In most parts of the world, however, human activity had had little impact on enormous areas which were sparsely inhabited or untouched wildernesses, such as the Great Plains of North America, the Amazon Basin, the forests of sub-Saharan Africa, or the Australian bush. These did not seem to need special protection, since most of them were still inaccessible or inhospitable to human beings.

The modern idea of deliberately conserving special areas of the countryside and opening them to the general public rather than reserving them for the wealthy and privileged, originated in the 19th century. For example, in 1832 the American artist George Catlin called for the protection of wildernesses in the western United States in order to preserve the landscapes which he had painted; and in 1835 the English poet William Wordsworth suggested in a guidebook to his native region, the Lake District, that it should become “a sort of national property” (although, unlike most later campaigners for national parks, he was opposed to large numbers of people being allowed to visit it).

Yellowstone National Park, covering parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, is regarded as the first national park in the world. It was designated by the United States Congress in 1872. The term “national park”, however, was first used for the Royal National Park established in New South Wales, Australia, in 1879. The concept of national parks then spread to Canada and New Zealand during the 1880s and several more parks had been established in all four countries by 1909, when the first national park in Europe was designated in Sweden. Similar parks were created in Japan, Mexico, the former Soviet Union, and several British colonies during the 1930s, and in Britain, France, and elsewhere in Europe during the 1950s. (Some of these incorporate former royal hunting grounds.)

Since then many more have been created, notably in India, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. Today the term “national parks” is also applied to other, usually smaller and often less protected areas set aside for conservation, such as the forest parks of Scotland and Ireland, the National Wilderness Areas and National Monuments managed by the United States National Parks Service, the provincial parks in Canadian provinces, or the state parks in the United States and Australia.