National Natural Landmark
national natural areas program in the United States
The National Natural Landmarks (NNL) Program in the United States recognizes and encourages the conservation of outstanding examples of the natural history of the country. It is the only national natural areas program that identifies and recognizes the best examples of biological and geological features in both public and private ownership. The program was established on May 18, 1962, by United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall.
The program aims to encourage and support voluntary preservation of sites that illustrate the geological and ecological history of the United States. It also hopes to strengthen the public's appreciation of the country's natural heritage. As of July 2024, 605 sites have been added to the National Registry of Natural Landmarks. The registry includes nationally significant geological and ecological features in 48 states, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The National Park Service administers the NNL Program and, if requested, assists NNL owners and managers with the conservation of these sites. Land acquisition by the federal government is not a goal of the program. National Natural Landmarks are nationally significant sites owned by a variety of land stewards, and their participation in this federal program is voluntary.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “National Natural Landmark” as national natural areas program in the United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as national natural areas program in the United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1967511. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1962 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “National Natural Landmark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.