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These are the best national parks in the world, from Yellowstone's geysers to Patagonia's granite peaks and Tanzania's wildebeest migration
National parks exist because someone decided a landscape was too important to leave to chance. Yellowstone, established in 1872, was the first place on Earth protected this way, and in the century and a half since, more than 100 countries have followed with parks of their own: fenced-off wilderness, protected migration routes, and geological formations rare enough to justify keeping development out. The idea has aged well. As tourism, development pressure and a warming climate reshape coastlines, forests and glaciers worldwide, the parks on this list represent some of the last large-scale ecosystems still functioning close to their natural state.
U.S. News & World Report keeps an annual, reader-voted ranking of the best national parks in the world, and its results lean heavily toward North America, a reflection of who tends to vote rather than a statement about which parks matter most globally. This list takes a wider view, drawing on six continents to show what a national park can be: active volcanoes in New Zealand, a salt pan in Namibia, a coral reef system visible from orbit in Australia, and the only islands on Earth where a wild Komodo dragon still roams.
