About Canada's Parks
Canada has one of the oldest and most extensive parks systems in the world. In addition to our renowned national parks, some provinces, like British Columbia and Ontario, have provincial parks systems that rival the national parks systems of other countries. Most provinces have provincial parks systems of significance to nature conservation.
Why Are Parks Important?
Protected and landscapes and seascapes are an essential part of any science-based program to protect biodiversity and the services which nature grants us. Benefits include:
- Clean air, clean water, and other ecosystems services
- Protected storehouses of genetic diversity, both among species and within them
- Places where we can learn, whether scientifically or personally, how natural ecosystems function and have evolved
- Natural places which we can use as “control studies”, as points of comparison to understand the human impact on other places which we mork and manipulate
- Places of healthy recreation, stress relief, and escape
- Places of beauty and inspiration
Defending these magnificent places is a job that is never done. Canada's parks are threatened by industrial development, and isolation from other wild areas.