What is peak district national park used for?

Answer 1

Background and History:

National Parks are areas of protected landscape. These landscapes include some of the most beautiful and remote areas of England and Wales but in addition, they are used for forestry and agriculture, for residential areas and even in some areas for industry e.g limestone quarries and military training. Unlike many of the more remote National Parks in other countries, these areas contain over a quarter of a million people. The National Parks were set up by an Act of Parliament in 1949. The first parks to be established were the Peak District, the Lake District, Snowdonia and Dartmoor in 1951. These were followed by Pembrokeshire and the North York Moors in 1952, the Yorkshire Dales and Exmoor in 1954, Northumberland in 1956 and the Brecon Beacons in 1957. Following on from the success of the first ten, the Norfolk Broads (1989) and the New Forest (1991) have been added to the list but these two areas do not yet enjoy the same status or funding as the original ten. People have lived in the areas now designated as National Parks for thousands of years. As early as the 19th century the romantic poets such as Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth wrote about the inspirational beauty of the 'untamed' countryside. Until then remote and relatively wild areas had been seen as somewhat uncivilised and dangerous. It was Wordsworth that famously claimed the Lake District as "a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and an interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy".

It was after this that the first National Parks were set up in America in the1860s when the government saw the need to protect wilderness areas from exploitation and make them available for all to enjoy.

Although Britain at that time had no such wild areas - our moors and mountains were nearly all farmed or managed in some way - there were influential individuals who recognised that increased industrialisation was a threat to the beauty of our more remote countryside.

By the 1930s more and more people were seeking an escape from towns and cities and there was growing conflict with landowners.

The mass trespass on Kinder Scout in the Peak District was one of the more famous examples where walkers exercised what they saw as their right to walk unhindered on open moorland. They faced opposition from gamekeepers employed by local landowners. Scuffles broke out and the police arrested several of the trespassers with 5 walkers ending up in jail.

At the end of World War II, the Labour government set up committees to examine long term land use and 'nature preservation' became part of the post-war reconstruction effort. Thanks to the pre-war campaigns there was an emphasis on making countryside available for recreation for all, not just nature conservation.