Northeast Greenland National Park

Northeast Greenland National Park protects the interior and northeastern coast of Greenland, within the Kingdom of Denmark, and is the largest national park in the world at about 972,000 square kilometers, an area greater than 166 of the world's 195 countries. It was established in 1974 and enlarged in 1988, and was designated an international biosphere reserve in 1977. The park encompasses parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet as well as ice-free coastal areas and the Peary Land region, and it holds an estimated five to fifteen thousand musk oxen, historically representing roughly forty percent of the world's population of the species. It is also home to polar bears, walruses, Arctic foxes and numerous seasonally breeding bird species. The park is essentially uninhabited year-round, with only a small number of people occupying scattered coastal research stations, such as the Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations, through the winter.