Europe Protects Its Wild and Working Landscapes, From Sarek to the New Forest

Sarek was founded in 1909 as one of nine national parks created in Sweden that year, which made it and its siblings the first national parks in Europe. It lies north of the Arctic Circle and holds roughly 100 glaciers, and it is also reindeer herding territory for the Sami people.

Gran Paradiso became Italy's first national park in 1922, growing out of a royal hunting reserve created in 1856 to protect Alpine ibex from poachers. Its ibex fell from about 3,000 at the founding to 419 by 1945 before recovering to roughly 4,000 by 2005.

Thingvellir was made a national park in 1928 to protect the site where Iceland's ancient parliament, the Althing, met from 930 until 1798. The same rift valley marks the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, so one park protects both a political and a geological story.

Bialowieza, protected as a reserve from 1932, is one of the last fragments of the primeval forest that once covered the European Plain, and it straddles the border between Poland and Belarus. It shelters more than 800 European bison, the heaviest land animal in Europe.

The Peak District was designated in 1951 as the first national park in the United Kingdom. Unlike the earlier parks on this path, it is managed as a lived-in landscape that balances farming, settlement and public access, and it divides into the gritstone Dark Peak and the limestone White Peak.

The Lake District National Park was also established in 1951, under Britain's 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. It protects glacially carved valleys and lakes, including Windermere, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017 for its combined natural beauty and cultural landscape.

Brecon Beacons, officially Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, was established in 1957 and covers about 1,344 square kilometers in Wales. Its highest point, Pen y Fan at 886 meters, is the highest peak in South Wales, and its moorland reflects centuries of grazing rather than untouched wilderness.

Founded in 1970, the Bavarian Forest was the first national park created in Germany. It is managed so that natural processes proceed largely undisturbed, and together with the adjoining Bohemian Forest in Czechia it forms the largest contiguous forested area in Central Europe.

Created in May 1971, Peneda-Geres is the only national park in Portugal and the country's oldest protected area. It covers about 695.9 square kilometers in the north and, together with a neighboring Spanish natural park, forms the UNESCO Geres-Xures biosphere reserve.

Jotunheimen was established in December 1980 over about 1,151 square kilometers of Norway. It holds more than 250 peaks above 1,900 meters, including Galdhopiggen, Glittertind and Store Skagastolstind, the three tallest summits in northern Europe.

Triglav National Park, the only national park in Slovenia, took its modern form in 1981. Mount Triglav, the highest peak of the Julian Alps, stands near its center, and the valleys that radiate from it feed the Soca, which flows to the Adriatic, and the Sava, which flows to the Black Sea.

The New Forest became a national park only in 2005, though it was proclaimed a royal hunting forest in 1079 and is recorded in the Domesday Book. Local commoners still pasture ponies, cattle and pigs on its unenclosed heathland and forest, so its ecology comes from continued human use.