Editor’s Note: Monthly Ticket is a CNN Travel series that highlights some of the most captivating aspects of the travel world. This September, we’re focusing on superlatives, showcasing the world’s biggest, tallest, and most expensive attractions and destinations.
National parks often boast impressive features, especially massive landmarks. Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal protects the southern slopes of Mt Everest, the world’s highest peak at 8,849 meters (29,032 feet).
Venezuela’s Canaima National Park is home to Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall at 979 meters (3,212 feet).
Spanning 400 square kilometers (154 square miles), Angkor Archaeological Park in Cambodia boasts the world’s largest religious monument and largest ancient ruined metropolis.
But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of national parks is their sheer size.
Yellowstone, larger than Delaware and roughly the same size as Wales, was considered vast when it became the world’s first national park in 1872.
However, the late 20th and early 21st centuries saw the creation of new protected areas that dwarf Yellowstone. Some of these newer parks are more than 50 times larger than Yellowstone.
Northeast Greenland National Park sprawls across nearly half of the world’s largest island, making it the globe’s largest national park and biggest land-based protected area, covering an area of 972,000 square kilometers (375,000 square miles) – larger than all but 29 of the United Nations’ member states. The park is mostly covered by the vast Greenland Ice Sheet, but it also features a rugged coastline inhabited by musk oxen, polar bears, and other Arctic wildlife.
In South America, the largest parks are found in the continent’s least-populated regions – the Amazon and Patagonia. Chiribiquete National Park in southeast Colombia, spanning 43,000 square kilometers (17,000 square miles), protects a vast tract of Amazon rainforest, tepui flat-topped mountains, and wild rivers, resembling a scene from “Jurassic Park.” It is home to a wide range of flora and fauna, as well as more than 75,000 ancient rock paintings, some dating back more than 24,000 years.
Australia’s largest nature reserve, the Munga-Thirri-Simpson Desert National Park, covering 36,000 square kilometers (13,900 miles), was established in 2021 to protect the desert landscapes of far northern South Australia. It includes one of the world’s largest dune fields, acacia woodlands, and provides a habitat for numerous bird species, small marsupials, dingoes, feral camels, and the perentie, Australia’s largest lizard.
China’s Sanjiangyuan National Park, established in 2021, is now the world’s largest national park, covering 123,100 square kilometers (47,529 square miles) on the Tibetan Plateau. The rugged and remote highlands are home to rare, endangered, or vulnerable animal species, including snow leopards, Himalayan wolves, wild yaks, and Alpine musk deer, as well as cultural sites.
In Europe, Iceland’s Vatnajökull National Park, spanning 14,141 square kilometers (5,460 square miles), embodies the island’s “fire and ice” ethos, with its volcanoes, hot springs, fjords, and glaciers.
Namib Naukluft National Park in western Namibia, Africa’s largest at 49,768 square kilometers (19,216 square miles), features some of the world’s highest and biggest sand dunes, created by millennia of sand deposition by waves and onshore winds. The park also includes desert canyons, a shipwreck-strewn coastline, and diverse flora and fauna adapted to arid environments.
Although not a national park, the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, Africa’s largest protected zone at 520,000 square kilometers (200,000 square miles), was formed in 2012 to safeguard parts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia.
Antarctica, while not having any national parks yet, is home to the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, established in 2016. Spanning 1.55 million square kilometers (600,000 square miles), the reserve is home to millions of polar animals, including penguins, whales, seals, and seabirds. There are hopes that Antarctica could become the Antarctic World Park, encompassing the entire continent at 14.2 million square kilometers (5.5 million square miles), making it around 10 times larger than any other reserve.