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National Parks of the World

The idea of national parks is one of America's best ideas and has been accepted by most countries of the world over the years. Although the concept was mentioned as far back as 1810 in Europe and later in the United States, the world's first truly national park was Yellowstone National Park in the United States which was established in 1872.

There soon followed parks in other nations: in Australia, the Royal National Park was established in 1879. In Canada, the Rocky Mountain National Park (now the Banff National Park) became its first national park in 1885 and New Zealand had its first national park in 1887. In Europe, the first national parks were a set of nine parks in Sweden established in 1909. Europe today has over 350 national parks. The national park movement became very active after World War II and today over a 100 countries have national parks. There are over 1200 national parks in the world.

We dedicate this page to those forgotten men and women around the world who worked so hard over the years to get their governments to preserve beautiful landscapes and wildlife in their countries so that everyone can enjoy them forever. And thanks to those who established the World Heritage sites. Thanks to one and all.

Wikipedia has a short article on the history of national parks and excellent external links to national park websites worldwide. Many online travel guides cover national parks in the countries they write about.

Search The Web
Sometimes the fastest way to find websites with information on the national parks of a country, or a specific national park, is just to do a web search. Here are some suggestions:
Wikipedia - For English-speaking people, an alternative is to go to the Wikipedia web site and use their search box and type in National parks of <country>. For example, National parks of France. They have a page for the national parks of many countries that includes good external links and often a map showing the locations of the parks.
When using a park name add the country if you didn't get what you wanted or it looks like the name is not unique (e.g., Royal National Park) Note: It doesn't matter whether you capitalize the words National Park or not in your search. You get the same results. Of course, if you have a specific question about a park just ask it in the search box. For example, it is common to ask about camping, hiking, RV parking, accommodations, are reservations needed?, park fees, and when the park is open in case it is not open all year, etc. Be sure to include national park as the name of the park may apply to other things as well. You might want to see if there is an official website for the park. If the website does not have an English version or a version in another language you speak, use the Google Website Translation service. Once there, scroll down to the Translate a web page box and see if they have an automatic translation between the two languages you need. If they do, select it and then paste the URL web address of the page you need translated into the http:// box. The great thing about this is that if you click on a link on the translated page to go to another page on the website, it gets automatically translated as well!
National parks of <Country>	National parks of France
<park name> national park official website	Yellowstone National Park official websites
Tours to <park name> national park + country	Tours To Royal National Park Australia
Online Guides to <park name> national park	Online guide to Banff National Park
Visiting <park name> national park	Visiting Yosemite national park
Visiting <country> national parks	Visiting Ireland national parks
Best time to visit <park name> national park	Best time to visit Pyrenees national park O.K., sometimes you don't get good results!

National Parks of the World

Wikipedia - National Parks. A short article on national parks. Scroll down to the bottom for a good list of external links to worldwide national park listings and directories.

World National Parks.net. A beautiful website organized by regions of the world and countries.

National Parks Worldwide. An excellent directory and clean, easy to use interface. It is organized by general websites (it has a comprehensive list of websites listing national parks) and then by continent with an alphabetical list of countries for each continent with links to their national park websites. This is all on a single, fast-loading page, as they have minimal graphics.

ParksandCampgrounds.com - Worldwide National parks. They have excellent information on national parks and campgrounds worldwide.

1World 2Travel - National Botanical Gardens and Parks of the World. They cover both botanical gardens and national parks.

Gorp - World Parks. An excellent list of worldwide national parks grouped by continent.

National Park Contacts and Organizations Worldwide. They have a good list of organizations that support national parks, as well as, park contact information.

National Parks of the United States

National Park Service. This is the government agency that oversees all national parks in the United States. They have a section for each park.

Fodor's - National Parks. They cover national parks in the western United States and Canada with links to other important sources of information. Topics include books, maps, fees and passes, tour operators, lodging options, when to visit, staying healthy and doing volunteer work in parks. Their information is very well presented. They also have information on a few national parks in other countries but you will need to do a search on their website using the country name and "national parks".

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