The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries in New Zealand
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful nature sanctuaries in New Zealand are Fiordland National Park, Abel Tasman National Park and Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park). The list covers 5 nature sanctuaries. Last updated 14 October 2026.
New Zealand split from the rest of Gondwana tens of millions of years ago and evolved in isolation, with birds filling the roles that mammals play elsewhere. That legacy, together with young mountains, glacial valleys and rain-soaked western coasts, makes its protected land some of the most distinctive in the world; much of the south-west forms the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Area.
Fiordland National Park is the wildest part of it, a maze of fiords, lakes and beech forest where the takahē, a flightless bird thought extinct, was rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in 1948, and where Sutherland Falls drops in three great leaps from a hanging valley. Abel Tasman National Park protects a gentler coast of sandy coves and granite outcrops at the top of the South Island, crossed by one of the country's best-known coastal walks. Westland Tai Poutini National Park climbs from coastal lagoons and kahikatea swamp forest to the ice of the Southern Alps, where the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers flow down towards the rainforest.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fiordland National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 2 | Abel Tasman National Park | National park | |
| 3 | Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park) | National park | |
| 4 | Westland Tai Poutini National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 5 | Mount Aspiring National Park | National park | ✓ |
01 Fiordland National Park
New Zealand45.386° S 167.347° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Julius_Silver from Pixabay The park's other headline story is a bird that was declared functionally gone. The takahē, a large flightless rail, was believed extinct for more than forty years until a small population turned up in the remote Murchison Mountains in 1948 — inside what's now Fiordland. It's still rare, still carefully managed, and still here specifically because this particular patch of mountains was remote enough that nobody had finished looking.
Did you know? Lake Poteriteri, in the south of the park, is the largest lake in New Zealand with no road access.
02 Abel Tasman National Park
New Zealand40.900° S 172.971° E
Image by Ricardo_Helass from Pixabay The Abel Tasman Coast Track, about 60 km along the shore, is one of the Department of Conservation's Great Walks. Many visitors combine it with sea kayaking or camping, and water taxis serve the coast. The Inland Track is quieter, and short walks such as the one to Wainui Falls suit a shorter stay.
Did you know? Māori have lived on this coast for around 700 years; Waitaha and Rapuwai preceded Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri, who were here when the Dutch arrived.
03 Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park)
New Zealand · 23.5 km from New Plymouth39.267° S 174.100° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 For the iwi of Taranaki the mountain is an ancestor, and its summit is sacred. In Māori tradition Taranaki once stood in the centre of the island beside Tongariro, Ruapehu and Pihanga; after losing a battle with Tongariro for the love of Pihanga, he fled west, gouging out the course of the Whanganui River on his way to the coast. James Cook sighted the peak in 1770 and named it Mount Egmont after the Earl of Egmont. Its slopes were confiscated by the Crown after the wars of the 1860s, protected as a forest reserve in 1881 and declared New Zealand's second national park, after Tongariro, in 1900.
Did you know? Because farmland surrounds it on all sides, the park appears from the air as an almost perfect green circle.
04 Westland Tai Poutini National Park
New Zealand43.567° S 170.083° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by ThierryBEUVE from Pixabay The park was created in 1960 to mark a century of European settlement in Westland, and at 1,320 km² it is New Zealand's fifth-largest national park. Since 1990 it has been part of Te Wāhipounamu – South West New Zealand, a World Heritage Site covering much of the wild southwest of the island. Beyond the glaciers, the Copland Track climbs a river valley to hot springs beside Welcome Flat Hut, one of the most rewarding walks on the coast.
Did you know? Geologist Julius von Haast named Franz Josef Glacier in 1865 after the Austrian emperor, and called Fox Glacier the Albert Glacier.
05 Mount Aspiring National Park
New Zealand44.383° S 168.733° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Tomas Sobek · CC BY 2.0 The park was created in 1964 as New Zealand's tenth national park, and is often called one of its least developed. Since 1990 it has formed part of Te Wāhipounamu – South West New Zealand, the World Heritage Area that also includes Fiordland, Aoraki/Mount Cook and Westland Tai Poutini national parks. The Haast Pass highway, one of the few roads across the Southern Alps, cuts through its north-eastern corner, and famous tramping routes such as the Routeburn Track, the Rees–Dart circuit and the Cascade Saddle track cross its valleys and passes.
Did you know? Mount Aspiring/Tititea, 3,033 m, is the highest peak in New Zealand outside the Aoraki/Mount Cook area.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful nature sanctuaries in New Zealand?
- On our list, Fiordland National Park ranks first, followed by Abel Tasman National Park and Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park).
- What is Te Wāhipounamu?
- Te Wāhipounamu, meaning the place of greenstone, is a UNESCO World Heritage Area in the south-west of the South Island. It joins four national parks: Fiordland, Mount Aspiring, Aoraki/Mount Cook and Westland Tai Poutini.
- Where was the takahē rediscovered?
- The takahē, a large flightless rail believed extinct, was rediscovered in 1948 by Geoffrey Orbell in the Murchison Mountains of Fiordland.
- How many nature sanctuaries are on this list in New Zealand?
- The list covers 5 nature sanctuaries.