Not big enough for the likes of US or Swedish national parks, sure. But Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Ireland, all have national parks classed as Category II so I don't think it's a matter of size. I can see how logging can be classed as "nature management" or even a reversal of damaging afforestation, but you can't say the same about a new gold mine in a national park...

I understand that naturally UK national parks can't be on the scale of US ones, but a comparison with other western European countries is more fair. As for old mines, I can understand reasoning behind protecting cultural landscapes as well as natural, but usually that's not called a national park. Not making a value judgement here; just recognising (as the UK national park agency does) that UK national parks are different.

@jamesqf Again true, but again, the same is true for most of western Europe, where national parks meeting IUCN II /do/ exist. IUCN does not equate national park with wilderness. Even the Laponia heritage sites in northern Scandinavia are not strictly wildernesses.

See also this question and the European wilderness map (some in Germany and Ireland, none in the UK).

@gerrit - are you trying to claim that the USA has never conducted industrial work inside a national park or had economic stimulus override the need for wilderness protection? Your comments certainly allude to that by mentioning Beinn Chuirn. A cursory reading of nps.gov/articles/aps-v4-i2-c8.htm shows that the USA still allows mining within designated national parks subject to lots of legislative loops. It is inconceivable that a modern nation would cease all development ever on land designated National Park. Your comments appear to be critical of the UK for no reason.

For instance, how many rivers have the USA dammed at massive ecological and wilderness cost? It was only a little over a year ago that on 28 March 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Presidential Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth” that overturned several environmental regulations including a temporary (three-year) moratorium on the leasing of federal lands for coal mining (National Parks included). So really, what good are those Category II protections in the long run?

@Venture2099 AFAIK promoting mining is not an official aim of the US NPS, unlike UK national parks.

Please point to the published documentation that says the United Kingdom National Parks promote mining. In this regard, your own President is far more vocal and promotional of mining in protected areas than any UK agency. You continually frame these questions in a way that indicates the USA to be superior when the U.S National Parks service had had a disastrous record of conservation and had a bewildering number of species die under their custodianship.

@Venture2099 Gold mine supported by Scottish national park, whereas in general, UK national parks seek to foster the economic and social well-being of local communities within the national parks.

Thank you for a link to a BBC news report indicating that the Trossach National Park authority have been convicned to support a single mine. Now if you kind kindly stick to the topic. Let me re.ind you - "Please point to the published documentation that says the United Kingdom National Parks PROMOTE mining." By your example we could find US National Park examples that promote the eradication of species and the felling of entire ecosystems and the complete strip mining of and damming the USA. Discrete events are not promotion. They are xommon sense discussions.

@Venture2099 I just did, both by linking to a documented instance of a park authority supporting some of the worst type of mining out there, and of official documentation that promoting the economy is an official UK national park aim. It does also have the aim to "promote natural beauty", but a cursory look at "areas of outstanding natural beauty" indicates that they confuse natural beauty with pastoral beauty.

@Venture2099 I don't know why you're going on about the USA; my question is about the UK.

Certainly, bad decisions happen elsewhere too. In Sweden, they built a hydro dam in a national park. However, before they could do so, it required an act of parliament (or whatever their equivalent is) removing the relevant area of land from the national park, because it was not possible to do so within a national park.

In the USA, there are "national preserves" that allow certain resource extraction; those may be comparable to UK national parks (except they aren't, really).

Fact is, the Brits destroyed their natural land many many centuries ago, with a handful of exceptions in what were royal hunting reserves.

The picture in N-America is different and quite dependent on the region.

AFAIK the ecosystem most systematically destroyed in N-America is the tallgrass prairie, of which there is essentially nothing left. But the west benefited from being inhospitable until conservation was a thing, and in the east forests have recovered after people moved west. But even in the US, federal wilderness areas exist only in the west, I think.

Destroyed? You absolute joker. Be quiet.