High & Far: How the World’s Protected Areas Have Avoided Threat

  • Lucas Joppa ,
  • Alexander Pfaff

PLoS ONE | , Vol 4: pp. e8273

About an eighth of the earth’s land surface is in protected areas (hereafter “PAs”), most created during the 20th century. Natural landscapes are critical for species persistence and PAs can play a major role in conservation and in climate policy. Such contributions may be harder than expected to implement if new PAs are constrained to the same kinds of locations that PAs currently occupy.