The best way to experience what our planet was like before modern humans began to dramatically change the landscape is to go where the wilderness is. There are more than 200,000 protected areas across the globe that, as of mid-2021, covered 16.64 percent of the land and 7.74 percent of oceans.
These national parks exemplify the spectacular beauty of Earth’s wildlands.
Northeast Greenland National Park, Greenland
Earth before humans is hard to imagine. There aren’t many places on our planet one can go and not encounter people or evidence of them. Northeast Greenland National Park is one of the last places where a vast area of true wilderness still exists.
The world’s biggest national park and protected area, Greenland National Park is more than 100 times the size of Yellowstone National Park and nearly as big as France and Spain combined. The park was established in 1974 and has approximately 386,000 square miles of completely uninhabited High-Arctic ecosystem, save for a handful of research, meteorological and military stations. Its landscape includes mountains, icebergs, tundra and vast fjords, with about 80 percent covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet.
The park has no roads, commercial airports, hotels, harbors or accommodations. Tours of the park are available, and one can enter with permission from the single neighboring settlement, Ittoqqortoormiit. Independent exploration can be made by dogsled or boat, depending on the season, but you will need to have a permit from the Greenland government before entering the park.
In the summer months of July and August, the fjords of Greenland National Park are free of ice and mostly accessible. This is also the most favorable time of year to see breeding birds and other wildlife, such as reindeer, before the winter migration begins.
Nine land mammal species inhabit the park, including polar bears and more than 40 percent of the musk oxen in the world. There are also mountain hare, fox and around 60 bird species such as snowy owl, geese and eider. Whales like humpback, minke and fin inhabit the coastline, as well as giant walrus, seals and sharks.
In mid- to late-August, the tundra is painted with striking red and orange, a tribute to the magnificence of nature in all its unspoiled glory.
Acadia National Park, Maine, United States
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A gem in a state full of natural beauty, Maine’s Acadia National Park is located on the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. It is made up of almost 50,000 acres, mostly on Mount Desert Island — the largest of Maine’s coastal islands — but also encompasses Isle au Haut, the Schoodic Peninsula and other outer islands.
The park has 60 miles of coastline with white sand beaches and New England’s famously rocky cliffs, as well as hiking trails that stretch more than 150 miles. Park Loop Road offers scenic coastal views and spectacular colors in the fall.
“Acadia is home to a unique collection of ecosystems. The park is filled with spaces for visitors to enjoy both quiet moments and active adventures. You can wake up with a morning bike ride on a forested carriage road, climb a granite-topped mountain for a picnic lunch with an unparalleled ocean view, and finally unwind at the end of the day by watching dramatic waves crash on the rocky shore,” novelist Cynthia Birk told EcoWatch.
Some of the abundant wildlife that call Acadia National Park home include moose, bobcats, American black bears, peregrine falcons, porcupines, barred owls, coyotes, otters, beavers, loons, osprey and harbor porpoises.
Created entirely from donations of private land, the park has a variety of historic and cultural sites like the Abbe Museum, Sieur de Monts Spring and the Jordan Pond House for afternoon tea. If you’re looking for less of a crowd, avoid the summer months, as those are the most popular.
“September (after Labor Day) is a wonderful time to visit. Most of the summer crowds have dwindled and the autumn ‘leaf peepers’ have not yet arrived. Mornings are often blanketed in a beautiful misty fog and later in the day temperatures are still comfortable for hiking,” Birk advised.
The highest point on the whole of the East Coast can be found on Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island at an elevation of 1,528 feet.
Fiordland National Park, New Zealand
New Zealand’s Fiordland National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, part of the Te Wāhipounamu – South West New Zealand World Heritage Area. Te Wāhipounamu means “the greenstone waters” in the native Māori language. Members of the Māori Tribe once came to Fiordland to fish and hunt.
The landscape of Fiordland is made up of alpine ranges and rainforests that are home to plants and wildlife that have been in what is now New Zealand since the existence of the supercontinent Gondwanaland. You will also find glaciers, fiords, mountains and lakes on the park’s nearly three million acres, but not many humans, as the region was never settled due to its steep terrain and abundance of rain, the most in all of New Zealand.
Hiking, day walks and kayaking on the lake are all popular ways to take in the stunning scenery of Fiordland’s unique landscape. Cruises on Milford Sound, a fiord that was carved by a glacier, are another favorite way to explore. The fiord has waterfalls and is home to seals, dolphins and tawaki, the Fiordland crested penguin, one of the rarest penguins in the world. Overnight boat cruises on Milford or Doubtful Sound allow you to experience these magical places at night, when all is still, and wake up to the glassy water of a secluded bay, surrounded by the rising peaks of the fiord.
The Milford Sound Lookout Track and the Milford Track are two of the many scenic walks in Fiordland National Park. The Milford Track takes you past enormous waterfalls and through rainforest and valleys carved by glaciers. This epic walk, usually hiked over four days and three nights, has been called the “finest walk in the world” and needs to be booked well in advance.
Glow worms are only found in New Zealand and a small region of Australia. See these beautiful bioluminescent creatures for yourself on the Te Anau glow worm tour. The tour lasts a little more than two-and-a-half hours, and takes you in a small boat through 12,000-year-old caves in the dark, as well as on a walk through narrow cave passages.
Taking a trip to Fiordland is like stepping in a time machine and getting to see what Earth was like 80 million years ago.
Olympic National Park, Washington State, United States
Olympic National Park has been home to the Quileute, Makah, Hoh, Quinault, Lower Elwha Klallam, Skokomish, Jamestown and Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribes since time immemorial.
Naturalist John Muir and others proposed the creation of an Olympic Peninsula national park, and in 1897, President Grover Cleveland designated the Olympic Forest Reserve. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the law making it a national park in 1938. The park was expanded to include part of the Pacific Coast in 1953. In 1976, Olympic National Park became a UNESCO site, and in 1981, it became a World Heritage Site.
The park is made up of 922,651 acres with three distinct ecosystems: old-growth temperate rainforest, Pacific Coast and mountains with glacial peaks. These ecosystems contain a variety of habitats that are home to many plants and animal species, including mountain beaver, river otter, muskrats, mink, deer, bobcats, cougars, elk, bears, racoons, porcupine, marten, 11 bat species, short- and long-tailed weasels, snowshoe hare, sea otters, sea lions, whales, dolphins, seals, Pacific salmon and more than 300 bird species.
The 12,000-year history of humans’ occupation of the area is told through more than 650 historic and cultural sites throughout the park.
“The first time I really saw the Olympics was when I was in Seattle in January and it was very crisp and cold. They were majestic and you could see why they are called the Olympic Mountains. They really seemed to be like Mt. Olympus and if there were gods they’d live in that majesty,” Angie Hardy Dorman, an educator and traveler based in Central Washington, told EcoWatch. “In the summer, it’s almost as amazing – where else can you visit a rainforest in the U.S.? It’s not what you expect when you hear rain forest – it’s not tropical and hot. It is majestic, and cool. It’s like the cathedral of the PNW – it has all the things that make the region unique.”
The park’s old-growth forests are essential habitat for some endangered species, including the northern spotted owl, an array of amphibians and the marbled murrelet, and contain one of the only remaining intact large tracts of primeval forest in the contiguous U.S. The Olympic Peninsula is the only place in the world where some endemic species, like the Olympic torrent salamander, Olympic chipmunk, Olympic marmot and Olympic snow mole, can be found on Earth.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what a landscape looked like thousands of years before modern civilization transformed it with roads, agriculture and buildings, but in Olympic National Forest you can tap into the pre-anthropomorphic wonder of a world before human influence.
Banff National Park, Canada
Canada’s crown jewel, Banff National Park was the first national park in the country and the third in the world. Its 2,564 square miles of wilderness in the Canadian Rockies is dotted with lakes and alpine meadows teeming with wildlife.
Inside the park itself are the town of Banff and the village of Lake Louise. Banff is a compact town bustling with a variety of shops, restaurants, bars, museums and art galleries. Down the road just 35.5 miles is the smaller village of Lake Louise. The village and nearby lake of the same name are nestled in an area perfect for hiking and skiing, with accommodations and restaurants, as well as a visitor information center, grocery store, deli, bakery and sporting goods store.
“Banff had been on my ‘Trip List’ for several decades, since I had visited Alberta for the first time at age 12. Over the years I had visited Alberta… over a dozen times before my ten-day Canadian book tour in January of 2020,” Monty K. Reed, author of Get STARTED don’t quit!, told EcoWatch. “When scheduling the tour the word Banff was mentioned and my ears perked up. My tour host has grown up in Banff and gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of the town. The beauty of the mountains is inexplicable. There are no words to describe the beauty. I have seen mountains and valleys around the globe in 20 countries and this is one of the best. To look at, to hike, camp or ski… any way you want it, Banff has it to offer.”
Established in 1885, Banff National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also a land of more than 1,000 glaciers and has an incredible 2,468-plus campsites and approximately 1,000 miles of hiking trails.
Banff is a land of big mountains and big animal species, including grizzly bears, moose, elk, black bears, bighorn sheep, cougars and wolves. Bald eagles grace the skies, along with 260 other bird species.
Wildlife crossings are abundant inside Banff, which boasts the most wildlife crossings on Earth with six bridges and 38 tunnels.
“My family and I went on a Harley ride up to Banff and Jasper National Parks once — they were both absolutely pristine and beautiful. We stayed in a campground that had a high voltage electric fence around it and a cattle guard at the gate to keep the migrating bears out. That was interesting. Especially since we were tent camping and didn’t have any cage vehicles, just bikes. My mother did not sleep easy that night!” adventurer and motorcycle enthusiast Patrick Roat told EcoWatch.
Banff National Park encompasses Rocky Mountain forests and foothills that are sacred to the Indigenous Peoples who have lived there for generations, fishing, trapping, gathering medicines, hunting and visiting natural hot springs. After the park was established, Indigenous Peoples were excluded from the national parks, but in the past 50 years that misguided policy has been overturned.
