Containing more than 60 peaks over and over 100 crystal clear deep glacier lakes, the Retezat Mountains are some of the most beautiful in the Carpathians. In 1935 the Government of Romania set aside an area of the Retezat Mountains creating the country's first national park.

Currently the park has . The area shelters one of Europe's last remaining intact old-growth forest and the continent's largest single area of pristine mixed forest. The highest peak of the Retezat Mountains, ''Peleaga'', is located in the park. The park also includes about 80 glacier lakes.

The flora consists of approximately 1190 plant species, of which 130 have the "endangered" or "vulnerable" status. Wolves, brown bear, wild boar, Eurasian Lynx, European Wildcat, chamois, Roe Deer and red deer, as well as small carnivore species such as Eurasian Badger and Eurasian otter populate the park.

The ''Gemenele'' scientific reserve is a strictly protected area of the park enclosing an intact primeval forest.

In 1979 the Man and Biosphere Program of UNESCO included the park in the international network of biosphere reserve.

External links

Category:National parks of Romania Category:Biosphere reserves of Romania Category:Hunedoara County Category:Old growth forests Category:Protected areas established in 1935 Category:Protected areas of the Carpathians

A national park is a reserve of natural or semi-natural land, declared or owned by a government, that is restricted from most development and is set aside for human recreation and environmental protection. While ideas for national parks had been suggested previously, the first such park, Yellowstone National Park, was established in 1872 by the United States. 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).

Definitions

In 1971 these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. These include:

While national parks are generally understood to be administered by national governments (hence the name), in Australia national parks are run by state governments and predate the Federation of Australia.

History

The first effort by any government to set aside such protected lands was in the United States, on April 20, 1832, when President Andrew Jackson signed legislation to set aside four sections of land around what is now Hot Springs, Arkansas to protect the natural, thermal springs and adjoining mountainsides for the future disposal of the US government. It was known as the Hot Springs Reservation. However no legal authority was established and federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877.

The next effort by any government to set aside such protected lands was, again, in the United States, when President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on June 30, 1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias (later becoming the Yosemite National Park) to the state of California:

In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first truly national park. When news of the natural wonders of the Yellowstone were first promulgated, the land was part of a federally governed territory. Unlike Yosemite, there was no state government that could assume stewardship of the land, so the federal government took on direct responsibility for the park, a process formally completed on October 1, 1890—the official first national park of the United States. It took the combined effort and interest of conservationists, politicians and especially businesses—namely, the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose route through Montana would greatly benefit by the creation of this new tourist attraction—to ensure the passage of that landmark enabling legislation by the United States Congress to create Yellowstone National Park. Theodore Roosevelt, already an active campaigner and so influential as good stump speakers were highly necessary in the pre-telecommunications era, was highly influential in convincing fellow Republicans and big business to back the bill. The "dean of western writers", American Pulitzer prize-winning author Wallace Stegner, has written that national parks are 'America's best idea,'—a departure from the royal preserves that Old World sovereigns enjoyed for themselves—inherently democratic, open to all, "they reflect us at our best, not our worst." Even with the creation of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and nearly 37 other national parks and monuments, another 44 years passed before an agency was created in the United States to administer these units in a comprehensive way — the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). Businessman Stephen Mather and his journalist partner Robert Sterling Yard pushed hardest for the creation of the NPS, writing then-Secretary of the Interior Franklin Knight Lane about such a need and spearheading a large publicity campaign for their movement. Lane invited Mather to come to Washington, DC to work with him to draft and see passage of the NPS Organic Act, which was approved by Congress and signed into law on August 25, 1916. Of the sites managed by the National Park Service of the United States, only 58 carry the designation of National Park. Following the idea established in Yellowstone there soon followed parks in other nations. In Australia, the Royal National Park was established just south of Sydney in 1879. Rocky Mountain National Park became Canada's first national park in 1885. New Zealand established Tongariro National Park in 1887. In Europe the first national parks were a set of nine parks in Sweden in 1909; Europe has some 359 national parks as of 2010. Africa's first national park was established in 1925 when Albert I of Belgium designated an area of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo centred around the Virunga Mountains as the Albert National Park (since renamed Virunga National Park). In 1973, Mount Kilimanjaro was classified as a National Park and was opened to public access in 1977. In 1926, the government of South Africa designated Kruger National Park as the nation's first national park. After World War II, national parks were founded all over the world. The Vanoise National Park in the Alps was the first French national park, created in 1963 after public mobilization against a touristic project.

See also

References

External links

Category:Conservation Category:Protected areas