A Sample for the Environmental Protection Implementation in Turkey: National Parks

Dublin Core

Title

A Sample for the Environmental Protection Implementation in Turkey: National Parks

Author

Doğanay, Serkan
Alım, Mete
ALTAS, Namık Tanfer

Abstract

The rapid population growth, extreme and unplanned consumption, in line with technological developments, cause intensive pressure upon natural sources. Likewise, the human values that have a global importance due to historical and cultural features face the similar problems. As one of the current global problems, environmental change and destruction urge to be taken some precautions. The conscious occurrence of the national parks, one of the precautions of environmental protection, goes back to the second half of the nineteenth century. The Yellowstone National Park, in the USA opened in 1872 can be seen as the official beginning of the environmental protection thought. The natural and cultural sources are under serious danger in Turkey where its settlement is very old. The first legal regulations in Turkey as for the national parks were made at the end of the World War II. The first national park is Yozgat Camligi National Park opened in 1958. Today, the number of these park is 40 and the protection area reaches 897 657 hectares. It is seen that the 1.1 % of the whole area (814 578 km²) is under protection as national park field. Intense tourism pressure causes ignorance of protection approach which is the basis of sustainable environment understanding. Further, the restriction of economic benefit zones causes the local people to develop negative attitudes towards protection areas. However, the expectations of the local people should be taken into consideration by means of scientific planning so that sustainable environment understanding can reach the optimum results. In this study the legal regulations as for the national parks, national parks and their geographical distribution, the fundamental problems and suggestions were examined.

Keywords

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

Date

2009-06

Extent

515

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