National parks of England and Wales


















The Brecon Beacons National Park, looking from the highest point of Pen Y Fan (886 m/2907 Corn Du (873 m/2864 feet). feet) to


The national parks of England and Wales are areas of relatively undeveloped and scenic landscape that are designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Despite the name, national parks in England and Wales are quite different from those in many other countries, where national parks are owned and managed by the government as a protected community resource, and permanent human communities are not a part of the landscape. In England and Wales, designation as a national park can include substantial settlements and land uses which are often integral parts of the landscape, and land within a national park remains largely in private ownership.

There are currently 12 national parks ( Welsh: parciau cenedlaethol) in England and Wales (see List of national parks). A further area in England — the South Downs — is in the process of being designated as a national park. Each park is operated by its own National Park Authority, with two "statutory purposes":

1. to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the area, and
2. to promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the park's special qualities by the public.

An estimated 110 million people visit the national parks of England and Wales each year. Recreation and tourism bring visitors and funds into the parks, to sustain their conservation efforts and support the local population through jobs and businesses. These visitors also bring problems, such as erosion and traffic congestion, and conflicts over the use of the parks' resources.

History

Untamed countryside?

Archaeological evidence from prehistoric Britain demonstrates that the areas now designated as national parks have had human occupation since the Stone Age, at least 5,000 years ago and in some cases much earlier.

Scafell Pike (right) and Scafell (left) in the Lake District National Park, as seen from Crinkle Crags


Before the 19th century, relatively wild, remote areas were often seen simply as uncivilised and dangerous. In 1725, Daniel Defoe described the Hig h Peak as "the most desolate, wild and abandoned country in all England.". However, by the early 19th century, romantic poets such as Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth wrote about the inspira tional beauty of the "un tamed" countryside. Significantly, in 1810, Wordsworth described the 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". This early vision took over a century, and much controversy, to take legal form in the UK with the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949.

The idea for a form of national parks was first proposed in the United States in the 1860s, where National Parks were established to protect wilderness areas such as Yosemite. This model has been used in many other countries since, but not in the United Kingdom. After thousands of years of human integration into the landscape, Britain lacks natural areas of wilderness. Furthermore, those areas

of natural beauty so cherished by the romantic poets were often only maintained and managed in their existing state by human activity, usually agriculture.

Government support for national parks is established

By the early 1930s, increasing public interest in the countrys

ide, coupled with the growing and newly mobile urban population, was generating increasing friction between those seeking access to the countryside and landowners. Alongside of direct action trespasses, such as the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, several voluntary bodies took up the cause of public access in the political arena.

In 1931, Christopher Addison (later Lord Addison) ch

aired a government committee that proposed a 'National Park Authority' to choose areas for designation as national parks. A system of national reserves and nature sanctuaries was proposed:

However, no further action was taken after the intervention of

the 1931 General Election.

The voluntary

Standing Committee on National Parks first met on 26 May 1936 to put the case to the government for national parks in the UK. After World War II, the Labour Party proposed the establishment of national parks as part of the post-war reconstruction of the UK. A report by John Dower, secretary of the Standing Committee on National Parks, to the Minister of Town and Country Planning in 1945 was followed in 1947 by a Government committee, this time chaired by Sir Arthur Hobhouse, which prepared legislation for national parks, and proposed 12 national parks. Sir Arthur had this to say on the criteria for designating suita

ble areas:

National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949

The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 was passed with all party support. The first 10 national parks were designated as such in the 1950s under the Act in mostly poor-quality agricultural upland. The land was still owned by individual landowners, often private estates, but also property owned by public bodies such as the Crown, or charities which allow and encourage access such as the National Trust. Accessibility from the cities was also considered important.

Hadrian's Wall crosses Northumberland National Park


Other areas were also considered: for example, parts of the coast of Cornwall were considered as a possible national park in the 1950s but were thought to be too disparate to form a single coherent national park and were eventually designat ed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) instead. The north Pennines were also con sidered for designation as a national park in the 1970s but the proposal was thought to be administratively too difficult because the area was administered by 5 different county councils.

Later additions

The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads are not in the strictest sense a national park, being run by a separately constituted Broads Authority set up by a special Act of Parliament in

1988, but the differences are sufficiently small that this entity is always regarded as being "equivalent to" a national park.

The New Forest was designated as a national park on March 1, 2005.

A further national park in the South Downs is proposed, and received support from the government in September 1999. The South Downs is the last of the 12 areas chosen in the 1947 Hobhouse Report which has yet to become a national park.

As of February 2005, a public inquiry is being held to decide the boundaries of the proposed national park. The Inquiry sat for 90 days in 2004 before being formally closed on 23 March 2005, [1]. The report from the inspector is expected to be published in the first months of 2006, and designation proce

ss is expected to take another two to three years.

List of national parks

Twelve areas are designated as national parks in England and Wales, and a thirteenth is in the process of being designated.

Key	National Park	Est.	km²
1	Peak District	1951	1,438
2	Lake District	1951	2,292
3	Snowdonia (Welsh: Eryri)	1951	2,142
4	Dartmoor	1951	956
5	Pembrokeshire Coast (Welsh: Arfordir Penfro)	1952	620
6	North York Moors	1952	1,436
7	Yorkshire Dales	1954	1,769
8	Exmoor	1954	693
9	Northumberland	1956	1,049
10	Brecon Beacons (Welsh: Bannau Brycheiniog)	1957	1,351
11	The Broads	1988	303
12	New Forest	2005†	580
[13]	South Downs	[2006 / 2007?]‡	1,641
	Established total		14,629
	Proposed total		16,270

† — The park was designated on March 1, 2005. A National Park Authority for the New Forest was established on 1 April 2005, and will assume its full statutory powers in April 2006. See Government press release.

‡ — The public inquiry to decide the boundaries of the proposed national park formally closed on 23 March 2005. Formal designation as a national park may occur in 2006 or 2007.

At the beginning of 2005, some 9.3% of the area of England and Wales lay within national parks; the addition of South Downs and the New Forest would raise this to 10.7%. The three national parks in Wales cover around 20% of the land area of Wales.