57 Lists of national parks

This is a list of the number of national parks per nation, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Nearly 100 countries around the world have lands classified as a national park by this definition.

This is a list of national parks in Africa. The nature of the parks varies considerably not only between countries but also within some nations - the degree of protection, accessibility and type of environment for which it is intended to deliver protection. Some parks have been cleared of their original human population, others have always been essentially uninhabited, while yet others contain significant population centers.

Austria has six national parks, all of them internationally accepted according to the IUCN standard. The first national park, Hohe Tauern, was established in 1981. They include each of Austria's most important natural landscape types — alluvial forest, Alpine massif, Pannonian steppe and rocky valleys.

This is a list of national parks of Belarus. It also lists main nature reserves.

Status as of 2008:

Total size of protected area of Bosnia and Herzegovina amounts of 57.83694 hectares, which is 1,13% of its entire territory. This is a list of areas protected by corresponding levels of the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely at the entity's levels, and with various categorizations.

Canada's National Parks are protected areas under the Canada National Parks Act, owned by the Government of Canada and administered for the benefit, education, and enjoyment of the people of Canada and its future generations. National parks are administered by Parks Canada, a Crown agency operating under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. The goal of the national parks system is to set aside lands representing the country's 39 distinct natural regions described in the National Parks System Plan, primarily to protect the ecological integrity of the land, and secondarily to allow the public to explore, learn about and enjoy Canada's natural spaces.

The protected areas of Colombia are grouped into the National System of Protected Areas. As of 2018, there are 59 nationally protected areas which cover about 169,545 km2 (65,462 sq mi) and represent more than 14% of the country's area.

There are currently 30 National Parks of Costa Rica, which are managed under the umbrella of SINAC, a department of Costa Rica's Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE). All told, Costa Rica's protected areas encompass more than 25% of the country's total land area. Many of these protected areas are national parks.

There are six national parks in the Kingdom of Denmark; five in Denmark proper and one in Greenland.

There are three National parks in Dominica. Other protected areas include two Forest Reserves and the Syndicate Parrot Preserve.

The national parks of Ethiopia include:

The national parks of France are a system of eleven national parks throughout metropolitan France and its overseas departments, coordinated by the French Agency for Biodiversity, an établissement public à caractère administratif under the control of the Ministry of Ecology. The first national park was established in 1963 and the most recent park was created in 2019.

There are 13 national parks in Gabon, all created in 2002 when President Omar Bongo established Gabon's National Agency for National Parks. The national parks cover 10% of the country.

The Gambia has the following National parks and nature reserves, managed by the Department of Parks and Wildlife Management:

The following are the 16 national parks of Germany, sorted from North to South:

Ghana has a large system of 21 protected areas which include 7 national parks, 6 Resource Reserves, 2 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 1 Strict Nature Reserve and 5 coastal wetlands.

National parks of Honduras is an incomplete list of the National parks in Honduras.

Hungary has ten national parks which cover approximately 10 percent of the country's territory. The parks are managed by the National Parks of Hungary government agency.

Since 2008, Iceland has three national parks. Prior to 2008 there were four national parks in Iceland; in that year Jökulsárgljúfur and Skaftafell were merged and incorporated into Vatnajökull National Park.

National parks in India are IUCN category II protected areas. India's first national park was established in 1936 as Hailey National Park, now known as Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand. By 1970, India only had five national parks. In 1972, India enacted the Wildlife Protection Act and Project Tiger to safeguard the habitats of conservation reliant species.

This is a list of national parks of Ireland.

The Italian national parks cover about five per cent of the country's land. The parks are managed by the Ministry of the Environment based in Rome.

National Parks and Quasi-National Parks in Japan are places of scenic beauty designated for protection and sustainable usage by the Minister of the Environment under the Natural Parks Law (自然公園法) of 1957. National Parks are designated and in principle managed by the Ministry of the Environment. Quasi-National Parks, of a slightly lesser beauty, size, diversity, or state of preservation, are recommended for ministerial designation and managed by the Prefectures under the supervision of the Ministry.

As of 2017, there are 13 nature national parks in Kyrgyzstan occupying 724,670.2 hectares. The first park - Kyrgyz National Park Ala-Archa - was established in 1976.

This list of national parks of Madagascar includes all officially recognized protected areas as of 2015. The protected areas network of Madagascar is managed by the Madagascar National Parks Association (PNM-ANGAP). The network includes three types of protected areas: Strict Nature Reserves, National Parks and Wildlife Reserves. At the 2003 IUCN World Parks Congress in Durban, the Malagasy President, Marc Ravalomanana, announced an initiative to more than triple the area under protection from approximately 4,200,791 acres (17,000.00 km2) to over 14,826,322 acres (60,000.00 km2). This "Durban Vision", as it has been dubbed, involved broadening the definition of protected areas in the country and legislation has been passed to allow the creation of four new categories of protected area: Natural Parks, Natural Monuments, Protected Landscapes, and Natural Resource Reserves. As well as allowing these new objectives for protected areas management, the new legislation also provided for entities other than PNM-ANGAP to manage protected areas, such as government ministries, community associations, NGOs and other civil society organizations, and the private sector.

There are 11 national parks in Morocco. Toubkal National Park, established in 1942, is the oldest and by far the most visited. The parks are situated rather well in-line, so it already allows wildlife migration to some extent. The only missing component in this wildlife corridor is a gap between Al-Hoceima and Seghir. Closing this gap would facilitate wildlife passage to the Spanish park of Los Alcornocales.

This is a list of national parks in Namibia, operated by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism.

There are ten National Forest Parks in Cyprus:

The protected areas of Nepal cover mainly forested land and are located at various altitudes in the Terai, in the foothills of the Himalayas and in the mountains, thus encompassing a multitude of landscapes and preserving a vast biodiversity in the Palearctic and Indomalayan realms. Nepal covers 147,181 km2 (56,827 sq mi) in the central part of the Himalayas. Altitudes range from 67 m (220 ft) in the south-eastern Terai to 8,848 m (29,029 ft) at Sagarmatha within a short horizontal span. This extreme altitudinal gradient has resulted in 11 bio-climatic zones ranging from lower tropical below 500 m (1,600 ft) to nival above 5,000 m (16,000 ft) in the High Himalayas, encompassing nine terrestrial ecoregions with 36 vegetation types. Botanists recorded 1,120 species of non-flowering plants and 5,160 species of flowering plants. Nepal ranks 10th in terms of richest flowering plant diversity in Asia. Zoologists recorded 181 mammal species, 844 bird species, 100 reptile species, 43 amphibian species, 185 freshwater fish species, and 635 butterfly species. In recognition of the magnitude of biodiversity the Government of Nepal has established a network of 20 protected areas since 1973, consisting of ten national parks, three wildlife reserves, six conservation areas and one hunting reserve. In 2017, the Shuklaphanta and Parsa Wildlife Reserves were upgraded to National Parks.

List of national parks of the Netherlands

National parks in the Netherlands were defined in the 1960s as areas of at least 10 km² consisting of natural terrains, water and/or forests, with a special landscape and flora and fauna.

The national parks of New Zealand are protected areas administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC). Although the national parks contain some of New Zealand's most beautiful scenery, the first few established were all focused on mountain scenery. Since the 1980s the focus has been on developing a more diverse representation of New Zealand landscapes. The parks are all culturally significant and many also contain historic features. Tongariro National Park is one of the World Heritage Sites that are of both cultural and natural significance, while four of the South Island national parks form Te Wahipounamu, another World Heritage Site. There are currently 13 national parks; a 14th, Te Urewera National Park, was disestablished in 2014.

There are several national parks of Nigeria. The Nigeria National Park Service (NNPS) is responsible for preserving, enhancing, protecting and managing vegetation and wild animals in the national parks of Nigeria. The NNPS is a parastatal under the Federal Ministry of the Environment, and is headed by a Conservator General. It works closely with the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation.

Norway has 47 national parks, of which 40 are on the mainland and 7 on Svalbard. National parks in Norway are stricter than many other countries, and nearly all motorized vehicles are prohibited. The freedom to roam applies, thus hiking, skiing and camping throughout the park are permitted, given that consideration to nature is taken. Roads, accommodation and national park centers are located outside the national parks. The parks are under the management of the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management and the local county governor.

Pakistan has 29 protected areas known as national parks. As of 2012, 22 of these are under supervision of respective provincial governments and remaining are in private care. Only some of these are under the conservation scope of IUCN. Protection and conservation of the environment of Pakistan was included in the concurrent constitution of 1973. As a result, Environment Protection Ordinance was enacted in 1983, which was mainly regulated by the Environment and Urban Affairs Division. Later, a new system of 'Modern Protected Areas' legislation began at the provincial level which assigned the protected areas with designations such as national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and game reserves. Further recommendations of the national parks of the Indomalayan realm were highlighted in the IUCN review of 1986. Nevertheless, the development of national parks was mainly carried out by National Conservation Strategy of 1992. Due to more awareness about their importance in conservation of biodiversity, 10 national parks have been established during the time period from 1993 to 2005.

National parks in Panama include:

This is a list of protected areas of the Philippines administered by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)'s Biodiversity Management Bureau under the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act of 1992. As of 2013, there are 240 protected areas in the Philippines covering a total area of 54,500 square kilometers (21,000 sq mi) – 14.2% of the Philippines' total area.

There are 23 national parks in Poland. These were formerly run by the Polish Board of National Parks, but in 2004 responsibility for them was transferred to the Ministry of the Environment. Most national parks are divided into strictly and partially protected zones. Additionally, they are usually surrounded by a protective buffer zone called otulina.

There are currently 48 national parks in Russia, a list of which is given below. Together they cover approximately 155,672 square kilometers (60,105 sq mi).

The national parks of Scotland are managed areas of outstanding landscape where some forms of development are restricted to preserve the landscape and natural environment. At present, Scotland has two national parks: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, created in 2002, and the Cairngorms National Park, created in 2003.

There are two terrestrial national parks and six marine national parks in the Seychelles. The parks are administered by Seychelles National Environment Commission (SNEC), which falls under the Department of the Environment.

There are nine national parks in Slovakia:

This is a list of national parks of Somalia.

The national parks of South Korea are preserved parcels of public land on which most forms of development are prohibited. They cover a total of 6.6% of the country's area, and are typically located in mountainous or coastal regions. The country's largest mountain park is Jirisan National Park in the southwest; this was also the first national park to be designated in 1967. The largest marine park is Dadohaehaesang, with an area of more than 2,200 km2 (850 sq mi), but almost all of this is water. The smallest park is Wolchulsan, with an area of only 56.1 km2 (21.7 sq mi).

There are sixteen national parks in Spain: ten in the Iberian Peninsula, four in the Canary Islands and one in the Balearic Islands. Twelve of the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain have national parks. Canary Islands has the most (four), followed by Andalusia (three), Castile-La Mancha and Castile and León. There are five autonomous communities that have no national parks: Basque Country, La Rioja, Murcia, Navarre, Valencian Community.

The National Parks of Spain are set out in the following table in alphabetical order. They are defined under Spanish Law 41/1997, which established a new model of shared management of the national parks between the National and the Regional Governments.

National parks of Sweden are managed by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and owned by the state. The goal of the national park service is to create a system of protected areas that represent all the distinct natural regions of the country. In 1909, Sweden became the first country in Europe to establish such parks when nine were opened following the Riksdag passing of a law on national parks that year. This was followed by the establishment of seven parks between 1918 and 1962 and thirteen between 1982 and 2009, with the latest being Åsnen National Park in 2018. As of 2020 there are 30 national parks in Sweden, comprising a total area of 743,238 hectares.

National parks of Taiwan are protected spaces for their nature, wildlife, and history in its current jurisdiction. Currently there are nine national parks in Taiwan, all are under the administration of the Ministry of the Interior. These national parks covers 7,489.49 square kilometres (2,891.71 sq mi). The 3,103.76-square-kilometre (1,198.37 sq mi) total land area constitutes around 8.6% of the entire land area of the country.

Protected areas in Tanzania are extremely varied, ranging from sea habitats over grasslands to the top of the Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa. About a third of the country's total area is protected to a certain degree as a national park, game reserve, marine park, forest reserve or the like.

National parks in Thailand are defined as an area that contains natural resources of ecological importance or unique beauty, or flora and fauna of special importance. As of 2015 Thailand's protected areas included 147 national parks, 58 wildlife sanctuaries, 67 non-hunting areas, and 120 forest parks. They cover almost 20 percent of the kingdom's territory.

There are 17 national parks in Tunisia.

The national parks of the United Kingdom are areas of relatively undeveloped and scenic landscape. Despite their similar name, they are quite different from national parks in many other countries, which are usually owned and managed by the government as a protected community resource, and which do not usually include permanent human communities. In the UK, designation as a national park may include substantial settlements and human land uses which are often integral parts of the landscape, and land within a national park remains largely in private ownership. These parks are not truly national parks according to the internationally accepted standard of the IUCN but they are areas of outstanding landscape where habitation and commercial activities are restricted.

The national parks of Venezuela are protected areas in Venezuela covering a wide range of habitats. In 2007 there were 43 national parks, covering 21.76% of Venezuela's territory.

This is a list of national parks in Vietnam:

Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) is an agency of the Zimbabwe government managing national parks. Zimbabwe's game reserves are managed by the government. They were initially founded as a means of using unproductive land.