Milford Sound, New Zealand: Mitre Peak, the mountain at left, rises 1,692 m (5,550 ft) above the Sound.

An elephant safari through the Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bengal, India

Arribes del Duero Natural Park (Salamanca and Zamora, Spain).

National Park, Swiss Alps

Protected areas are locations which receive protection because of their environmental value, or environmental plus cultural values. Examples include parks, nature reserves, and wildlife sanctuaries. Not included in the term are historic sites such as buildings that do not include natural environmental aspects, but some are "cultural landscapes" which reflect interaction of humankind and nature. The term protected area includes Marine Protected Areas, which refers to protected areas whose boundaries include some area of ocean. A large number of kinds of protected area exist, which vary by level of protection and by the enabling laws of each country or rules of international organization. There are over 108,000 protected areas in the world with more added daily, representing a total area of 19,300,000 km² (7,500,000 sq mi), or over 13 percent of the world's land surface area, greater than the entire land mass of Africa.^[1] By contrast, as of 2 February 2009, only 0.8 of one percent of the world's oceans are included in the world's ~5000 Marine Protected Areas.^[2][3]

[edit] Definition

A protected area, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is:

"A clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values”.

[edit] Types

There are six IUCN Protected Area categories:

• I. Strict nature reserve/wilderness area: protected area managed mainly for science or wilderness protection
• II. National park: protected area managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation
• III. Natural monument: protected area managed mainly for conservation of specific natural features
• IV. Habitat/Species Management Area: protected area managed mainly for conservation through management intervention
• V. Protected Landscape/Seascape: protected area managed mainly for landscape/seascape protection and recreation
• VI. Managed Resource Protected Area: protected area managed mainly for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems

[edit] History

International commitments to the development of networks of protected areas date from 1972, when the Stockholm Declaration from the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment endorsed the protection of representative examples of all major ecosystem types as a fundamental requirement of national conservation programs. Since then, the protection of representative ecosystems has become a core principle of conservation biology, supported by key United Nations resolutions - including the World Charter for Nature 1982, the Rio Declaration at the Earth Summit (1992), and the Johannesburg Declaration 2002.

Globally, national programs for the protection of representative ecosystems have progressed with respect to terrestrial environments, with less progress in marine and freshwater biomes.

[edit] Criticism

Some countries such as China, Madagasgar, Namibia and Venezuela place a protection category over lands, but provide little enforcement, such that the areas are not substantively protected from development or misuse.

Protected areas often involve the exclusion of resources users from the protected area. As such they have been criticized for the displacement of local population.^[4] Much of the new protected areas are in developing countries which makes the local population vulnerable.

In some places, wildlife is protected by armed guards, killing 'poachers' looking for subsistence.^[5]

[edit] See also

• Applied ecology
• Community Conservation Areas
• Indigenous Protected Areas
• World Commission on Protected Areas
• Zakaznik

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas
• World Database on Protected Areas
• Protect Planet Ocean: The only place on the web dedicated to bringing all aspects of Marine Protected Areas to your desktop