Why do parks get the "national park" status?

National parks are one of the country's greatest treasures; they are areas of protected nature. Of course there are lots of natural areas that are not national parks. This does raise the question of just how do they determine which areas will become national parks and which areas will not.

Technically the government can call any area that it wants a national park and in the past this led to some pretty odd choices. However nowadays there are some pretty specific criteria that must be met in order for an area to become a national park. The most important of these is that the area must have an ecosystem that has not been materially altered by development. This was not always the case but it is now generally considered to be a requirement.

In addition the area that is to become a national park must also offer either great scientific, educational or recreational value or it must be an area of great natural beauty. Admittedly this is pretty vague since almost any area can be included in this definition. Nevertheless the rules have been pretty consistently interpreted over the last forty years or so. In most cases the park must have an area of at least a thousand hectares but there are quite a few exceptions to this rule.

One of the most important criteria of a national park is that the public must have access to the park. A national park belongs to the people so they must be allowed to visit. In certain cases there will be restrictions on visitors in terms of where or when they can go but they can't be denied access altogether. Some parks are located in areas that are very difficult to get to so they receive few visitors but if you can get to the park you are allowed to visit.

One of the most important criteria for a national park is that it must not allow natural resources to be exploited. There are some exceptions to this for things like maintenance and some parks allow fishing but this is all very strictly controlled. The ability to use resources in a national park is becoming controversial in some areas because of the worldwide demand for them. This is especially true in Alaska where there are several large parks that sit on oil reserves. Many people are concerned that these parks will lose their protected status.

One of the requirements for a national park is that there has to be a staff and a budget to provide for its protection. As a result all national parks have rangers who look after them. The number of rangers and what their specific duties are will depend on the size of the park and how many visitors it gets.