Tongariro

Established in 1894, it was New Zealand's first national park and the fourth in the world, and remains the only national park on the planet created out of a voluntary gift by its own original owners: in 1887 the paramount Māori chief Horonuku Te Heuheu Tūkino IV, of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, gave the sacred summits of Tongariro, Ngāuruhoe and Ruapehu to the British Crown precisely to keep them from being sold off or split up among European settlers, and so secure their protection for good. In 1993 it became the first site in the world inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list under the new criteria for an associative cultural landscape, recognising the mountains' Māori spiritual meaning without any need for physical architectural remains. Mount Ngāuruhoe was the visual basis for Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.