New Zealand has 13 national parks plus Te Urewera (a former national park now governed under its own legal personhood), covering roughly 2.9 million hectares — about 11% of the country’s land area. From the volcanic plateau of Tongariro to the granite beaches of Abel Tasman, from the glaciers of Aoraki to the kiwi forests of Stewart Island, this is the network laid out chronologically with everything you need to know before you visit.
Click any park for the highlights, the visitor profile, and a focused map. The chronological timeline below tells the story of how the network was built — including the constitutional first that made Te Urewera unlike anywhere else.
Current national parks
13
Plus Te Urewera
+1
Total protected area
2.9M ha
Great Walks
9 of 11
National park
Te Urewera (former NP, now legal personhood)
Click any park on the map for highlights, visitor profile, and a focused map.
Sources. Park boundaries from OpenStreetMap (gazette-derived, contributor-maintained), simplified for display. Te Urewera boundary is approximate — the area no longer has the same status as a Crown-managed national park, so its boundaries are not maintained in OSM. The polygon shown is a coarse outline of the historic park footprint, not the current legal boundary. Cross-checked against Department of Conservation listings. Family difficulty ratings reflect Newswire’s assessment of the easiest meaningful park experience. Tiles © OpenStreetMap, © CARTO.
Every NZ national park, oldest to newest
A chronological tour of the network, from Tongariro (1887, the world’s fourth national park) through Rakiura (2002), with the constitutional first that took Te Urewera into its own category in 2014.
The colonial era (1880s-1900s)
The world’s fourth and second national parks. Tongariro was gifted to the Crown by Te Heuheu Tūkino IV of Ngāti Tūwharetoa to keep it from private sale. Egmont followed thirteen years later.
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1887Tongariro National ParkNew Zealand’s oldest national park, gifted to the Crown in 1887 by Te Heuheu Tūkino IV of Ngāti Tūwharetoa to keep its sacred peaks (Tongariro, Ngāuruhoe and Ruapehu) from private sale. UNESCO recognises it as a dual World Heritage site for natural and cultural values — one of only a handful globally. Active volcanic landscape, alpine ecosystems, and the most-walked single-day track in the country.
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1900Te Papa-Kura-o-TaranakiEstablished 1900, the country’s second national park. Renamed Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki in 2024 when Mt Taranaki gained its own legal personhood under a Te Tiriti settlement — a constitutional first paralleling the Whanganui River and Te Urewera. Distinctive near-perfect volcanic cone surrounded by lush rainforest, with a sharp ecological boundary at the park edge famously visible from satellites.
The post-war wave (1929-1964)
A long, steady expansion through the mid-20th century. Most of the Southern Alps and the southwest South Island gained protection in this period, including the country’s two largest parks.
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1929Arthur’s Pass National ParkFirst national park created on the South Island. Established 1929 around the rail and road pass linking Canterbury to the West Coast. Mountain landscapes spanning the Main Divide, beech forest on the eastern side, podocarp-broadleaf rainforest on the western. The road-rail tunnel through Otira Gorge is a feat of NZ engineering history; the kea population in the park is one of the most studied in the country.
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1942Abel Tasman National ParkEstablished 1942 by act of Parliament after a campaign by Pérrine Moncrieff. The coastal granite headlands and yellow sand beaches make it visually distinctive. The Abel Tasman Coast Track is one of the ten Great Walks and is unusual among them for being beach-and-bush rather than alpine. Sea kayaking has been part of the park’s identity since the 1980s and several commercial operators run out of Mārahau and Kaiteriteri.
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1952Fiordland National ParkCreated 1952. At 1.25 million hectares it is by far the largest national park in NZ, covering Fiordland and most of the southwest South Island. Three of the Great Walks (Milford, Routeburn, Kepler) are inside it. The takahē, rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in 1948 after being thought extinct, has its main wild population here. Fiordland is also a UNESCO World Heritage site as part of Te Wāhipounamu, recognising the Pleistocene glaciation evidence and the relict Gondwanan biota.
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1953Aoraki / Mount Cook National ParkEstablished 1953 after Aoraki / Mt Cook climbed into national consciousness as Edmund Hillary’s training ground in the lead-up to Everest. Contains 19 peaks over 3,000 metres and the largest of New Zealand’s glaciers. The Hooker Valley Track is one of the most accessible serious-mountain walks in the world — three suspension bridges, formed all the way, terminating at the lake at the base of the country’s highest peak. Co-managed with Ngāi Tahu, who hold mana whenua status.
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1954 → 2014Te Urewera — former national park, now legal personhoodTe Urewera was created as a national park in 1954, covering the bush-and-lake heartland of Tūhoe in the eastern North Island. In 2014 it was de-gazetted as a national park under the Te Urewera Act, which gave the land its own legal personality with Tūhoe co-governance. It is no longer Crown land in the conventional sense — it is its own legal entity, neither owned nor managed in the way other parks are. The 2014 settlement was a constitutional first in the world; it directly influenced the later 2017 Whanganui River and 2024 Mt Taranaki personhood arrangements. The land remains accessible under Tūhoe-Crown management arrangements, including Lake Waikaremoana and the Great Walk around it.
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1956Nelson Lakes National ParkEstablished 1956 around the two largest lakes of the upper South Island, both gouged by Ice Age glaciers. The DOC Mainland Island restoration project on the St Arnaud range has been one of the longest-running predator-control programmes in NZ — the recovery of mistletoe, kākā and bellbird is documented over decades. The lakes themselves are remarkable for water clarity, with visibility regularly over 60 metres.
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1960Westland Tai Poutini National ParkEstablished 1960. Pairs with Aoraki / Mt Cook National Park as the western half of the same alpine system — together they form Te Wāhipounamu. The two glaciers (Franz Josef Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, Fox Te Moeka o Tuawe) advance and retreat on decadal cycles and have both retreated substantially in recent decades. The Okarito kiwi (rowi) lives in the lowland forest around the Okarito Lagoon and is one of the rarest kiwi taxa.
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1964Mount Aspiring National ParkEstablished 1964 around the iconic 3,033m peak of Tititea / Mt Aspiring. The park stretches across the Main Divide from Wanaka to the Hollyford Valley, sharing the Routeburn Track with Fiordland National Park. Less developed tourist infrastructure than the bigger alpine parks gives it a wilder feel. Important for southern alpine ecosystems and as habitat for kea, takahē (reintroduced) and the Haast tokoeka kiwi.
The 1980s-90s wave (1986-1996)
After a 22-year gap, three new parks in the late 80s and 90s: river country, limestone coast, and the wilderness northwest. Whanganui and Paparoa were both political and cultural responses — to a long iwi treaty negotiation and to the recognition of West Coast natural values.
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1986Whanganui National ParkEstablished 1986. Centred on the Whanganui River and surrounding hill country. The Whanganui River was granted legal personhood in 2017 under Te Awa Tupua Act, the first river in the world to be recognised as a legal person — a precedent that influenced the later Te Urewera and Mt Taranaki settlements. The Whanganui Journey is the only Great Walk that’s done by canoe rather than on foot. Strong iwi co-governance through Ngā Tāngata Tiaki o Whanganui.
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1987Paparoa National ParkEstablished 1987. Limestone karst coast on the West Coast, with cave systems, blowholes and the famous Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki. The Paparoa Track was opened in 2019 as a memorial to the 29 miners who died at Pike River in 2010 — the first new Great Walk in over two decades. The park’s geology is unusual for NZ — most of the country has volcanic and metamorphic rocks, this is sedimentary limestone with a coast carved into it by waves.
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1996Kahurangi National ParkEstablished 1996, the second-largest national park in NZ at over 4,500 sq km. Wilderness park covering northwestern South Island including marble karst landscapes (the Mt Owen massif), the granite Tableland, and the entire course of the Heaphy Track between the Aorere Valley and the West Coast. Some of the deepest and longest cave systems in the southern hemisphere are inside the park.
21st century (2002 onwards)
One new park this century, on Stewart Island. Te Urewera, originally created in 1954, was de-gazetted as a national park in 2014 and now has its own legal personhood — a constitutional first that influenced both the Whanganui River and Mt Taranaki settlements.
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2002Rakiura National ParkCreated 2002. Covers most of Stewart Island / Rakiura, the country’s third-largest island. Pre-European Māori name Te Punga o Te Waka a Māui — the anchor stone of Māui’s canoe. The kiwi here (the Stewart Island tokoeka) is the only kiwi species that forages in daylight and is therefore the easiest to see in the wild. Aurora australis is visible from the south coast on dark nights. The park ends at the village of Oban; everything beyond is protected.