Yellowstone invented a park idea the IUCN later counted
A national park is government-owned land set aside for outstanding natural, historic, or cultural value. The United States created Yellowstone in 1872 as a “public park or pleasuring-ground,” now widely treated as the world’s first national park even though the exact label came later.
Yellowstone was not the first protected land. Tobago's Main Ridge Forest Reserve, set aside in 1776, and the slopes of Mongolia's Bogd Khan Uul, protected in 1778 to shield nearby farms, are counted as the oldest legally protected areas. From 1735 the Kingdom of Naples passed laws guarding natural areas, starting with Procida. In 1810 William Wordsworth called England's Lake District a kind of national property for anyone with an eye to see it, and in the 1830s the painter George Catlin imagined a nation's park where people and wildlife of the American West could be kept intact.
The American path ran through Hot Springs, Arkansas, reserved by Congress in 1832, and Yosemite Valley, handed to California by Abraham Lincoln in 1864. California's handling of Yosemite was seen as poor, so when Yellowstone was created from federal territory in 1872, Washington kept direct control. The first law actually to use the words national park created Michigan's Mackinac in 1875, which later lost the status. Australia's Royal National Park near Sydney followed in 1879, Banff in 1885 and Tongariro in 1887; Sweden founded Europe's first nine in 1909, and Africa's first, now Virunga, dates from 1925.
The IUCN classes national parks as Category II protected areas, and some 6,555 qualified in 2006. Its 1969 definition called for large, little-altered ecosystems of scientific or scenic value, protection enforced by the highest national authority, and controlled public access; in 1971 it added benchmarks such as at least 1,000 hectares and adequate staff and budget. Northeast Greenland, created in 1974 and covering 972,000 square kilometres, is the largest that meets the standard.
Names and categories often diverge. Switzerland's national park is a strict nature reserve under IUCN rules and Britain's New Forest is a protected landscape, while in the United Kingdom and Taiwan the label can cover scenic countryside with towns inside. Parks Canada, founded on 19 May 1911, is the oldest national park service.
Source: National park
