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Worldwide

Largest national parks in the world

Size in a national park is a measure of what can survive inside it: a caribou herd, a wolf pack, a whole river system. The largest by an enormous margin is Northeast Greenland, at 972,000 square kilometres bigger than all but about thirty countries, with no permanent residents and a few hundred visitors a year. The Russian Arctic park and Alaska's Wrangell-St Elias follow, then the Namib-Naukluft, the largest in Africa.

#ParkCountryArea
1 Northeast Greenland National Park Greenland 972 000 km²
2 Russian Arctic National Park Russia 88 000 km²
3 Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve United States 53 320 km²
4 Namib-Naukluft National Park Namibia 49 789 km²
5 Wood Buffalo National Park Canada 44 800 km²
6 Serrania de Chiribiquete National Park Colombia 43 000 km²
7 Tumucumaque Mountains National Park Brazil 38 874 km²
8 Quttinirpaaq National Park Canada 37 775 km²
9 Salonga National Park Democratic Republic of the Congo 36 000 km²
10 Bernardo O’Higgins National Park Chile 35 259 km²
11 Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve United States 34 287 km²
12 Nyerere National Park Tanzania 31 044 km²
13 Nahanni National Park Reserve Canada 30 050 km²
14 Canaima National Park Venezuela 30 000 km²
15 Pamir National Park Tajikistan 26 117 km²
16 Denali National Park and Preserve United States 24 464 km²
17 Jau National Park Brazil 23 673 km²
18 Lorentz National Park Indonesia 23 500 km²
19 Kafue National Park Zambia 22 400 km²
20 Etosha National Park Namibia 22 270 km²
21 Kluane National Park and Reserve Canada 21 980 km²
22 Ruaha National Park Tanzania 20 226 km²
23 Kakadu National Park Australia 19 804 km²
24 Kruger National Park South Africa 19 623 km²
25 Yugyd Va National Park Russia 18 917 km²
26 Laguna San Rafael National Park Chile 17 420 km²
27 Manovo-Gounda St Floris National Park Central African Republic 17 400 km²
28 Manu National Park Peru 17 163 km²
29 Katmai National Park and Preserve United States 16 564 km²
30 Lake Clark National Park and Preserve United States 16 309 km²

Namib-Naukluft National Park

Namibia

Namib-Naukluft is the largest conservation area in Namibia and one of the largest in Africa, a slab of desert bigger…

4 tickets & tours

Wood Buffalo National Park

Alberta, Canada

Wood Buffalo is the largest national park in Canada and one of the largest in the world, a tract of northern forest,…

No online ticket

Quttinirpaaq National Park

Nunavut, Canada

Quttinirpaaq occupies the northern end of Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, the most northerly…

No online ticket

Salonga National Park

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Salonga lies in the very centre of the Congo basin, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it is the largest…

No online ticket

Nyerere National Park

Tanzania

Nyerere is the southern safari that Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam send their visitors to, and the fly-in day trip is its…

43 tickets & tours

Most of the giants are remote by definition, and several cannot be visited at all. The ranking below uses the area recorded for each park in the catalogue, so it covers the 650 or so parks we describe rather than every protected area on earth.

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