Protected areas worldwide: a report card

February 15, 2015 — An article soon to be published in Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, takes stock of what countries have actually achieved relative to their commitment to conserve at least 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine environments through ecologically representative protected areas (PAs). The commitment, made under the Convention on Biological Diversity, emphasized protecting "areas of particular important for biodiversity". We are falling far short of this goal, especially in poorer countries, and for all taxonomic groups. The authors, who include ICFC's Ariadne Angulo, call for better targeted PA expansion and other approaches including community- and privately managed sites and "effective area-based conservation measures".