National parks come in all shapes and sizes. Yellowstone, often thought of as vast, covers just under 9,000 square kilometres. Serengeti National Park stretches further, protecting over 30,000 square kilometres of East African savannah.
Yet even these giants are dwarfed by the world’s biggest national park – a wilderness so large it’s more than 100 times the size of Yellowstone.
What’s the biggest national park in the world?
The biggest national park in the world is Northeast Greenland National Park. Created by the Danish government in 1974, it was subsequently expanded in 1988, now encompassing an area of 972,000 km2. It is Greenland’s only national park and was the first national park to be created in the Kingdom of Denmark.
Did you know? Greenland is also the world's biggest island.
Around 80 per cent of the national park is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, the second largest body of ice in the world (following the Antarctic Ice Sheet).
There are very few permanent residents of this area. At the far edge of the park lies the Inuit settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit, one of the most remote settlements on Earth. It’s located between the national park and the Scoresbysund fjord system, with a town made up of colourful wooden buildings.
Around 40 people are based in the national park at research stations along the coast. There is also a naval unit that patrols the region using dog sleds.
Wildlife in the Northeast Greenland National Park
The national park is home to a diverse range of Arctic wildlife, including polar bears, Arctic foxes, musk oxen, walruses, seals, Greenland wolves and seabird species including ducks, geese, gulls, skuas, puffins and shorebirds such as sandpipers and plovers. The waters around the national park are also home to narwhals and beluga whales.
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Top image credit: Getty Images
