National park National Park in 1914. The UK waited until 1951 for the designation of its first national park, The Peak District National Park which sits at the southern end of the Pennine Hills surrounded by industrial cities. This followed perhaps 70 years of pressure for greater public access to the landscape. By the end of the decade a further 9 national parks had been designated. Europe has some 359 national parks as of 2010. Africa's first national park was established in 1925 when Albert I of Belgium designated an area of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo centred on the
Kéran National Park areas deemed too much destroyed to be re-naturalized have been excluded from the national park and officially deallocated for human development. This shrunk the size of the national park, now named the Oti-Kéran National Park, from 179550 to 69000 hectares. What remained is planned to form part of a future biosphere reserve, linked by the Oti-Mandouri National Park to the WAP (W, Arli, Pendjari) protected area system in Burkina Faso, Benin, and Niger. It is, however, still threatened by settlements, cotton-farming, charcoal production, and other human activities within the park boundaries. Ecotourism was quite well-developed in the Oti-Kéran National Park