National Parks, Monuments, and Nature Preserves Around the World Posters & Art Prints
for social studies and geography educators, home schoolers, theme decor for office and studio.

International and national parks, monuments and nature preserves are reserves of land and/or sea set aside for “public use, resort, and recreation” and to conserve and protect from exploitation by human development and pollution.

Sri Lanka was the site of the world's first wildlife reserve in the 3rd century BC, where stone inscriptions erected by the king commanded the people not to harm animals or destroy trees within the area. In medieval Europe there were royal game preserves, places that were off limits to everyone except the aristocracy, such as the forest of Fontainebleau. In the 19th century Romantic poet William Wordsworth wrote about England's Lake District as a “sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy” and writer-artist Beatrix Potter played an important role in conserving some of England's most beautiful landscapes. The naturalist John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, was instrumental in establishing protection for sensitive natural sites in the US, such as Yosemite Valley.

President Teddy Roosevelt established five national parks and 50 wildlife refuges, set aside 150 million acres of timberland as public domain, and oversaw the creation of the U.S. Forest Service, as well as four national monuments: Devils Tower, WY, El Morro, NM, Montezuma Castle, AZ, and Petrified Forest, AZ.

The first U.S. national park was Yellowstone in the state of Wyoming, established in 1872. The largest national park in the world is the Northeast Greenland National Park (est. 1974). In 2006 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) stated there were over 6,500 national parks worldwide.