Steep, high, and remote: bias found in the location of protected areas

Protected areas today cover 13% of the planet, which on the surface sounds like an encouraging statistic. But the results from a new study in PLoS ONE cast doubt on the value of many of these protected areas for conservation.

Lucas Joppa and Alexander Pfaff from Duke University conducted a geospatial analysis of protected area networks in 147 countries and found that most were biased towards high elevations, steep slopes, and lands remote from urbanization. The study also found that this bias was greatest for lands with the strongest levels of protection (which presumably are the preserves which receive the largest amount of management resources).

These results are not entirely surprising. It generally is less expensive and contentious to protect remote lands with undesirable characteristics for development and agriculture. But if the point of designating protected areas is to prevent negative impacts such as development and deforestation, then many of the current networks do little to address the problems.

This study also raises doubt about past research into the effectiveness of protected areas, which often compares deforestation rates inside and outside of parks.  This would not be comparing apples to apples if protected areas are biased towards less accessible areas.

A counterargument to the message in this study is that we should protect the easiest areas first because these efforts will consume the least amount of time and effort. A professor once told me, 'People will develop every square inch of the planet if given the opportunity. No place is off limits.' And areas that are far from urbanization now may be much closer in 10 years.

Nonetheless, the study results indicate that we need to do a better job focusing protected areas on places facing greater risk. The authors write:

"The issue of locating protection in areas of greatest threat has received the most attention in the discussion of biodiversity hotspots and other global prioritization schemes…Myers et al. argue that placing effective protection in these regions is a logical way to protect significant numbers of species that, in the absence of protection, would likely be lost. We agree with this concept, and our results highlight the increasing realization that future protected areas allocation must differ from historic protection strategies."

--Reviewed by Rob Goldstein

Joppa, L., & Pfaff, A. (2009). High and Far: Biases in the Location of Protected Areas PLoS ONE, 4 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008273