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
Sirmilik National Park (or Inuit language, traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic) "Sirmilik" means "place of glaciers," as it represents Bylot Island's plethora of glaciers and ice caps. As Canadian Arctic Inuktitut-speakers referred to northern Baffin Island as "Sirmilik", the name of the geographic region became the name of the national park. Extensive archaeological exploration of the park area has indicated that the area has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. The earliest known are predecessors of the modern-day Inuit. The area was explored by European whalers and by explorers in their search for the Northwest Passage. In the 1610s,