Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by indoordin0saur 710 days ago
It's wild to me that in Europe "National Parks" will have people living in them, forestry plantations and even clearcutting. In North America National Parks are entirely kept as wilderness with no use or development of the land allowed except for tourist infrastructure built and managed by the park administrations themselves.
2 comments
arlort 710 days ago
As far as I'm aware national parks in the US were created on land that didn't really have anyone living in it (maybe Indians in some of them), you'd have to go back to the early middle ages to find similar areas in Europe (I'm guessing but at least in places like Italy I'm fairly sure of that)

I really really wish we had similar expanses of untouched nature here in Europe but unfortunately it was all gone by the time people started seeing untouched nature as something to preserve

link
COGlory 710 days ago
This isn't true. Some, yes, but parks like Acadia, Grand Teton, and Smoky Mountain all had people living in them.
link
KineticLensman 710 days ago
>It's wild to me that in Europe "National Parks" will have people living in them

(UK here). In the UK, there is almost nowhere that doesn't have people living there. The closest national park to where I live is the New Forest [0]. The area was originally established as a royal hunting park in 1079. One of the main modern villages, Brockenhurst, goes back to 1253, so there has 'always' been a resident population. The National Park status was formally established only in 2005, although the area has had unique land management for centuries, which has prevented uncontrolled development. The park has a large population of free-roaming ponies although all of these are owned and their breeding is controlled. Most of the other UK National Parks are set in similarly ancient landscapes, although their relative remoteness and topography mean that they only have small settlements.

To a casual observer, they usually appear wild (e.g. high windswept moorland) but as with the rest of the UK, the landscapes have been shaped by human activities for millenia.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Forest

link