Introduction

HOW ARE NEW NATIONAL PARKS ESTABLISHED?

National parks are a special type of public lands administered by the federal government under the provisions of the National Parks Act. Identifying, selecting and establishing new national parks can be a long and complex process. Many of the important factors for establishing new national parks are beyond the control of the federal government.

Although there is a sequence of steps followed for identifying, selecting and establishing new national parks, each situation is different, and the final result reflects the individual circumstances and the involvement of all those parties that are directly affected. The following paragraphs, however, give an overview and outline of the normal sequence of events.

Status of planning for Natural Regions Click on the image above to view it at a larger size. Note the enlarged image is 111KB which represents an approximate download time of 30s at 28.8 kbps modem speed. Some scrolling may be necessary.