Protected areas occupy a high-profile position in the politics of environmental conservation, largely due to their history and their contemporary distribution. Although these institutions’ stated goals appear as largely unequivocal (e.g., the preservation of one or more environmental elements), numerous studies in the social sciences have revealed the complex and diverse realities that hide behind their designations and models. By observing the political, economic, and socioecological relationships in which natural parks (and especially national parks) participate, we can sketch an overview of this complexity, along with the plurality of critical approaches to these topics found within the panorama of contemporary anthropology. First, the history of national parks and its intertwinement with the emergence of environmental concerns on the global political stage demonstrates the political impact of this topic, located at the center of shifting geopolitical contexts. Next, a thematic review of anthropological studies on environmental conservation, which also touches upon the interdisciplinary dialogues that characterize the field, helps us to grasp connections between different stakes (epistemological, economic, political, symbolic) and to evaluate the frictions between broad dynamics and localized scenarios. In this sense, ethnographic evidence from the national park of the Maddalena archipelago (Sardinia) enables us to deepen our understanding of the directions considered more or less innovative for conservation, such as sustainable development and its corollaries or cap-and-trade systems for emissions. This approach is founded on a situated context, nourished by an interdisciplinary dialogue, and develops an attentiveness to the interrelations between living species, climactic elements, and inorganic elements. As such, this work invites us to move beyond the conceptual vagueness of notions that cut across the field of environmental conservation and to note the political dimension of individual and collective engagements.