National ARKS

Seven decades after the UK’s first national parks were created, our largest protected landscapes should nurture thriving biodiversity. How can we make them true havens for wildlife?

- Paul Bloomfield

Seedheads nod in waves washing across a green ocean. Grazing those undulating expanses are herbivores in their dozens, even hundreds, glancing up periodically to scan the horizon. A well-camouflaged predator peers hungrily from the shade of a lonely tree. It’s a seemingly timeless scene echoed in national parks the world over – until you examine the fine detail.

Yellowstone’s bison and deer range over nearly 900,000ha, hunted by wolf, coyote and grizzly bear; the Serengeti’s vast grasslands are mown by a multitude of wildebeest and impala on their epic annual migration through some three million hectares of rolling savannah, stalked by lion, cheetah and leopard.

The sheep and cows of the Peak District – the UK’s first national park, established 70 years ago, on 17 April 1951 – graze discrete parcels of pasture within the park’s 140,000-odd hectares. You might, if you’re fortunate, spy a polecat, or a short-eared owl quartering moorland. One species you’ll certainly encounter is Homo sapiens: about 38,000 people live within the park’s boundaries, joined by more than 13 million visitors each year.