Top 15 World’s Largest National Parks You Won’t Believe Exist

Despite humans’ desire to destroy nature, we live on a planet that is unparalleled in its natural beauty.

The world’s largest national parks are home to the most spectacular landscapes of Earth.

A national park is defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a large area of land with “One or several ecosystems not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation, where plant and animal species, geomorphological sites and habitats are of special scientific, educational, and recreational interest or which contain a natural landscape of great beauty.”

National parks are established by national governments for both conservation and recreational purposes.

Millions of visitors from around the world visit these parks to enjoy their magnificent vistas and wildlife.

What is the world’s largest national park? What is the largest national park in the United States?

The following is a list of the 15 largest national parks in the world.

Chattahoochee National Forest

Which national park includes the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi River?

Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest (35,268 acres) includes most of the Cohutta wilderness, the biggest wilderness east of the Mississippi River, with nearly 40,000 acres spread over two national parks.

Chattahoochee National Forest is rich in biodiversity, with an array of trees such as oak, pine, buckeye, maple, and sassafras and animals such as hawks, black bears, coyotes, bats, and foxes.

This forest is one of the most popular hiking destinations in the U.S., with over 430 miles of scenic mounting trails and 1,367 miles of trout streams, including the beginning of the famous 2,135-mile Appalachian Trail.

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Death Valley National Park

What is the largest national park in the U.S.?

Located on the California-Nevada border, Death Valley National Park is the largest national park in the continental U.S. Sprawling across nearly 3,422,024 acres, the park is known as the hottest, driest, and lowest among all national parks in the U.S.

This largest national park in the continental United States provides a habitat for many animal and plant species that have adapted to its desert environment. The park’s unique geography comprises low valleys with salt flats, rugged mountain terrain, canyons, badlands, dunes, and oases.

Badwater Basin considered the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, is created by vast, cracked salt flats stretching nearly 200 square miles, forming surreal patterns across the enormous landscape.

This area is home to Native American tribes dating back to 7000 BC.

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Denali National Park and Preserve

Denali National Park and Preserve covers 6,045,153 acres in Alaska. It encompasses the central, highest part of the Alaska Range, along with many glaciers and glacial valleys.

When it was first established in 1917, the park was called Mount McKinley. 63 years later, it was renamed Denali or “the High One,” which is the native Athabaskan name for the stunning peak.

The park’s terrain is a mix of boreal forest at low altitudes, arctic tundra at middle altitudes, glaciers, snow, and bare rock at high altitudes.

Its biggest attractions are a breathtaking landscape and varied wildlife, and Denali, the highest mountain in North America at 20,310 feet.

Check out this interesting video on things to do in Denali National Park and Preserve:

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Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve

The second-largest national park in America, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve is north of the Arctic Circle. It covers an area of 8,472,506 acres and preserves the Brooks Range in northern Alaska.

This largest national park in us consists of a labyrinth of glacial valleys and mountains covered with boreal forest or barren inclines of the Arctic tundra north of the divide.

Six scenic rivers run through this preserve, which provides a home to grizzly bears, wolves, Dall sheep, moose, wolverines, and an abundance of fish.

Despite its pristine wilderness, Gates of the Arctic is among the least visited national parks in the U.S. due to the lack of roads and infrastructure for tourist activity.

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Glacier National Park

Established in 1910, Glacier National Park is among the largest national parks in the US. This 1583-square-mile World Heritage Site is in northwestern Montana, at the U.S.-Canadian border.

The park offers spectacular views of 25 active glaciers and valleys, over 130 pristine lakes and rivers, old forests with 1,000 plant varieties, and an abundance of wildlife. It includes the Rocky Mountain terrain and constitutes the core of the preserved region known as “The Crown of the Continent.”

Blackfoot Glacier is considered the largest glacier in Glacier National Park. Signs of human activity in this region date back to 10,000 years.

With over 700 miles of hiking trails, the park has attracted over 100 million visitors worldwide.

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Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon National Park is one of the world’s largest national parks that offers breathtaking views to visitors. Named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1979, the park is situated in northwestern Arizona in the U.S., covering an area of 1,217,262 acres.

Considered the largest national park in the continental United States, the park’s biggest attraction is the Grand Canyon, a deep gorge formed by the Colorado River.

This mile-deep and 18-mile-wide river gorge is regarded as one of the Wonders of the World. Scientists consider it a creation of tectonic uplift that has been carved over millions of years.

Check out this interesting video on things to do and how to build a Grand Canyon National Park itinerary:

The Grand Canyon is between 5 and 70 million years old, and humans have populated the region for over 13000 years, including 11 modern tribes with cultural ties to the terrain.

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Kafue National Park

The second-largest national park in the world, Kafue National Park, is located in Western Zambia and covers an area of 22,500 square kilometers. Established in 1924, it is known as Zambia’s oldest and biggest national park. The park’s terrain consists of savanna grasslands with a thick cover of Miombo tree species in some areas.

Kafue’s biggest attraction is its wildlife, which includes over 55 different species of mammals and birds. The park offers pristine wilderness and a rich diversity of wildlife, including antelopes, red lechwe, puku, zebras, and blue wildebeest, providing the ultimate safari experience.

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Namib-Naukluft Park

Sprawling over 19,216 square miles, the Namib-Naukluft Park is the largest game park in Africa and the fourth-largest national park in the world.

Located in western Namibia, the park straddles the area between the Atlantic Ocean shoreline and the rim of the Great Escarpment. It covers portions of the world’s oldest Namib Desert, the lagoon at Sandwich Harbor, and the Naukluft Mountains.

The park provides sublime vistas of mountains, dunes, riverbeds, and moonscapes. Its main attractions are Sossusvlei, a clay pan encompassed by dunes, and Sesriem, a small canyon.

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Northeast Greenland National Park

What is the world’s largest national park? Greenland’s Northeast National Park is the world’s largest national park, sprawling over an area of 375,000 square miles. Established in 1974, it covers Knud Rasmussen’s Land in the north to Mestersvig in the east, encompassing the entire northeastern part of Greenland.

The park offers breathtaking views of the uppermost parts of the Northern Hemisphere’s biggest ice cap. It also provides a refuge to many animal species, including musk oxen, arctic fox, stoat, collared lemming, arctic hare, polar bears, and walruses.

This region was home to diverse Inuit cultures hunting Arctic species of animal for centuries.

Currently, the hunters from the Ittoqqortoormiit tribe have regular access to this pristine land full of wildlife.

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Serengeti National Park

Serengeti National Park, one of the world’s largest national parks, is located in the Serengeti Plain in northern Tanzania. Designated as a national park in 1951, it spans 5,700 square miles of forested savanna and the finest grassland in Africa.

The park is a sanctuary to large herds of animals such as gnu [wildebeests], gazelles, zebras, lions, spotted hyenas, leopards, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, giraffes, cheetahs, and baboons, as well as over 350 varieties of birds.

Serengeti is famous for the largest unaltered mass annual migrations of millions of Zebras and wildebeests, which occur mainly along the ‘western corridor’ to Lake Victoria. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981.

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Sequoia National Park

Located in the southern Sierra Nevada, Sequoia National Park is the largest national park in the continental US, covering an area of 631 square miles of forested mountains. Sequoia National Park is famous for giant sequoias with their large cinnamon-colored trunks that grow on the Sierra Nevada range’s western slope.

The largest tree in Sequoia National Park is the General Sherman Tree, which is 275 feet tall and more than 36 feet in diameter.

The park lies adjacent to Kings Canyon National Park, and UNESCO designated both terrains as “Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve” in 1976.

The Park includes Mount Whitney, which, at 14,505 feet above sea level, remains the tallest mountain in the mainland U.S.

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Tassili n’Ajjer

Considered one of the largest national parks in the world, Tassili n’Ajjer (“Plateau of rivers”) is a national park in southeastern Algeria. It is a large plateau in the Sahara desert that encompasses an area of over 28,000 square miles. In 1982, Tassili n’Ajjer was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its renowned collection of prehistoric cave art.

Over 15,000 drawings and inscriptions depict climate change, the movements of people and animals, and the evolution of human civilization in the Sahara desert from 6000 BC to the first centuries. This site also boasts unique geological formations that create “forests of rock” out of eroded sandstones.

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Vatnajökull National Park

The largest national park in Europe, Vatnajökull National Park covers an area of over 14,141 km2 and encompasses nearly 14% of Iceland. Surreal vistas formed by a varied landscape of rivers, glacial ice, caves, and volcanic and geothermal activity make this park a huge tourist attraction.

The park is home to Vatnajökull, which is Europe’s largest glacier, and ten large volcanoes, including eight that are subglacial.

The interactions between volcanoes and the cracks underneath the Vatnajökull ice cap produce the stunning sight of jökulhlaup, which is an abrupt flood triggered by a rupture at the edge of a glacier during an eruption.

Wildlife that was endemic to the area since the Ice Age dwells in the volcanic terrains of the park.

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Wood Buffalo National Park

One of the largest national parks in the world and the largest in Canada, Wood Buffalo National Park covers an area of 17,300 square miles in northeastern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories.

Established in 1922, it provides a sanctuary to the largest population of wild bison in America and diverse wildlife such as bears, caribou, moose, deer, and beavers.

The park is also the only remaining nesting ground for the nearly extinct whooping crane, known as the tallest bird endemic to North America.

One of the park’s main attractions is the world’s biggest inland delta, formed by the Peace and Athabasca rivers. The Peace River runs across the plains and forested landscapes dotted with lakes.

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Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve

What is the largest national park in the United States?

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is the largest national park in Alaska and the largest single wilderness in the United States. With a total of 9,078,675 acres, it is approximately six times larger than Yellowstone National Park and is the largest national park in the United States.

The park consists of stunning views of glaciers, peaks, remote mountains, rolling valleys, raging rivers, and an array of wildlife that thrives in a rocky and icy landscape.

This largest us national park is home to Mount St. Elias, the second-highest peak in the United States, at 18,008 feet. Wrangle volcanic field, spreading over 2,000 square miles, has one of the world’s biggest active volcanoes by volume.

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Other National Parks Worth Mentioning

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe

The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park was established to link Kruger National Park in South Africa, Limpopo National Park in Mozambique, and three parks in Zimbabwe, which include communal land in Zimbabwe named Sengwe and the Makuleke region in South Africa.

The park is teeming with wildlife, and you can be lucky enough to spot the big 5 on a safari tour – African elephants, buffalos, leopards, lions, and rhinos. The park covers nearly 100,000 km2.

Galapagos Marine Reserve in Ecuador

The Galapagos Marine Reserve is the second largest marine reserve in the world, with a 133,000 km2 area. It is home to more than 2,900 marine species, including whales, sea lions, seals, dolphins, penguins, cormorants, and albatrosses.

Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Kavago Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area is one of the largest conservation areas in the world.

It spans areas in five African countries: Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and it is centered around Victoria Falls, Caprivi, and Chobe.

It contains a diversity of ecosystems and is home to major populations of lions, buffalo, hippos, zebras, wildebeest, hyenas, wild dogs, and the largest elephant population in Africa.

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven natural wonders and one of the largest national parks in the world. Marine life is abundant there, and it includes over 3000 reef systems and coral cays.

If you want to experience picturesque tropical islands and gorgeous golden beaches, this is the place to visit.

Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii and the Midway Atoll

If you love diving, then this is a must-see for you.

The coral reefs are home to the rainforests of the sea and over 7,000 marine species. You can even find rare species, such as the endangered Hawaiian monk seal and the threatened green turtle, along with 14 million seabirds breeding and nesting along six square miles of land in the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Phoenix Islands Protected Area in Kiribati

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area is the largest and deepest World Heritage site on earth, with 408,250 km2 in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. The Phoenix Islands are internationally important seabird havens, and the surrounding waters contain many fish, sharks, and reefs.

Since the area is very remote and the deep sea is mostly unexplored, you can find species that have yet to be discovered.

National Park in North and East Greenland

The National Park is the largest in the world and covers 972,000 km2 of inland ice, fjords, parts of the Arctic Ocean, and the Greenland Sea. You can travel here to see the Northern Lights, icebergs, and large populations of musk ox, polar bears, walruses, whales, arctic foxes, and snowy owls.

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• Red Crowned Crane
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• Congo Peafowl
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Related Resources

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