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Redwood National and State Parks
| Site number: | 134 |
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| Type of site: | Natural | |
| Date: | - | |
| Date of Inscription: | 1980 | |
| Location: | North America, United States of America, California | |
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| Description: | Redwood National Park encompasses a coastal mountain region that frames the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco. A glorious forest of sequoia redwood trees envelops the area, boasting the world’s tallest and most impressive trees. Both the marine and land life are equally mind-blowing, particularly the sea lions, the bald eagle and the endangered California brown pelican. --WHMNet paraphrase from the description at WHC Site, where additional information is available. | |
| The Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) are located in the United States, along the Pacific Ocean coast of northern California, a combined area of 131,983 acres (53,413 ha). The parks protect 45% (38,982 acres or 15,776 ha) of all remaining Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) old-growth forests. These trees are the tallest and one of the most massive tree species on Earth. In addition to the redwood forests, the parks preserve other indigenous flora, fauna, grassland prairie, cultural resources, and 37 miles (60 km) of pristine coastline. In 1850, old growth redwood forest covered more than 2 million acres (810,000 ha) of the California coast. The northern portion of that area, originally inhabited by Native Americans, attracted many lumbermen and others turned gold miners when a minor gold rush brought them to the region. Failing in efforts to strike it rich in gold, these men turned toward harvesting the giant trees for booming development in San Francisco and other places on the West Coast. After many decades of unobstructed clear-cut logging, serious efforts toward conservation began. By the 1920s work of the Save-the-Redwoods League, founded in 1918 to preserve remaining old growth redwoods, eventually resulted in the establishment of Prairie Creek, Del Norte Coast, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parks among others. Redwood National Park was created in 1968, by which time nearly 90% of the original redwood trees had been logged. The National Park Service (NPS) and the California Department of Parks and Recreation (CDPR) administratively combined Redwood National Park with the three abutting Redwood State Parks in 1994 for the purpose of cooperative forest management and stabilization of forests and watersheds as a single unit. This degree of collaboration between the National Park Service and a state park system is unique in the nation. The ecosystem of the RNSP preserves a number of threatened animal species such as the Brown Pelican, Tidewater Goby, Bald Eagle, Chinook Salmon, Northern-spotted Owl, and Steller's Sea Lion. In recognition of the rare ecosystem and cultural history found in the parks, the United Nations designated them a World Heritage Site on September 5, 1980, and an International Biosphere Reserve on June 30, 1983. The United Nations designated Redwood National and State Parks a World Heritage Site on 5 September 1980. --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. | ||
| Source: | http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/134 | |
| Reference: | 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center, Site Page. | |