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Our National Park System is a true treasure.
10 Reasons to Visit a National Park Now: Photos
Our National Park System is a true treasure. Here are 10 great reasons to visit it right now. More than 440,000 people visit the Canyonlands National Park -- located in Southwest Utah -- every year and it's easy to see why: Dramatic arches and serpentine slot canyons are only matched by the intense colors of the desert rock. Your Guide to the Canyonlands National Park
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Though Acadia National Park is perched on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, it is characterized by its mountains: Craggy knobs that spring up in dome-like shapes from the coast. This makes for great hiking only a few steps away from incredible sea kayaking. NEWS: Should National Parks Be Strictly Wild?
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Tucked against the borders of Montana and British Columbia, Glacier National Park is one of the more remote in the system. It is also one of the largest, covering more than 1,000,000 acres, which includes parts of two mountain ranges, over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants and hundreds of species of animals. 5 Reasons to Visit Glacier National Park in Winter
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More sandstone arches and towers can be found, not surprisingly, in Arches National Park. The park -- which is also located in Utah -- is home to the famous "Delicate Arch" which hangs improbably over a deep valley. NEWS: Are National Parks Essential?
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Yellowstone needs no introduction: It was the world's first and is famous for its abundance of wildlife and unusual volcanic terrain. Yellowstone's Big 5: The Best Animals to See i n Winter
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Great Sand Dunes National Park looks like a scene from the Sahara or Gobi desert -- but this incredible place is, in fact, nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
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Zion National Park contains the unique intersection of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin and Mojave Desert -- making it a place of astounding biological and geological diversity. Everything You Need to Know Before Visiting Zion National Park
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Yosemite was declared a World Heritage Site in 1984. The granite cliffs, waterfalls, giant sequoia trees and rich biological diversity draw more than 3.7 million visitors each year. Spectacular Time-Lapse Video of Yosemite Is Mind-Blowing, Took Two Years to Film
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The park that gets its name from the namesake canyon is a must-see on any national parks hit list. Though most people are content with the view from the rim, Grand Canyon National Park is actually home to some extremely rugged and remote terrain for the more adventurous. NEWS: Grand Canyon Gets Younger
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Last but certainly not least is Joshua Tree National Park -- named for the unusual tree that populates the desert there, which looks like something from a Dr. Seuss book. The 10 Best Hiking Spots in the United States
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Peru is creating a national park to protect a vast territory in the Amazon basin that is vulnerable to drug trafficking and illegal logging and mining, the country's environment minister said Saturday.
Called the Sierra del Divisor National Park, it covers an area of about 14,170 square kilometers (5,470 square miles) in a region inhabited by a variety of indigenous communities living in self-imposed isolation.
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Peru's President Ollanta Humala will travel to the region Sunday to sign a decree creating the park, Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal said on his Twitter account.
The park has an estimated 3,000 species of plants and animals, many of them found nowhere else in the world, according to the government.
The announcement comes just three weeks ahead of a UN summit aimed at sealing a global pact on climate change.
Advocates of the new park have said it will enable the capture of 150,000 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of nearly 40 percent of Peru's daily carbon output.
Sierra del Divisor has been a protected zone since April 2006. Since then, the communities living there have lobbied for its designation as a national park to stiffen legal protections against encroachment by loggers, miners and drug traffickers.
Sierra del Divisor is the second national park created since Humala took office in 2011, after the Gueppi National Park, a 6,260 square kilometer expanse centered on the Gueppi River in southeastern Peru.