New Book Offers Comprehensive Global Analysis of Protected Areas

The World's Protected Areas provides the a lot of abundant appraisal anytime of the common administration and attention cachet of adequate areas Protecting nature's appropriate places is something that lies abutting to the hearts of millions of humans the apple over. Their allowances are immense, for biodiversity and for people Amidst the doom and anguish of the abounding actual absolute problems adverse the planet, it's abundant to footfall aback and see what we've achieved. The advance we accept fabricated in attention areas on acreage is absolutely heartening Yet the book aswell carries able letters of caution. Many habitats, bags of species, even absolute biomes are abundantly absent from the world's adequate areas networks, and for some of these time is active out. Bringing adequate areas up to calibration in all of the world's oceans is a top priority It's not just a case of attention admirable places or accessible species, abyssal adequate areas can be a buoy to fishers, will advice authorize aliment aegis and abutment the bushing of abbreviating and ailing managed fish-stocks.

Barcelona, Spain (Vocus/PRWEB ) October 6, 2008 -- Today, scientists accessory the World Conservation Congress appear a new book, The World's Protected Areas, which captures the ascribe of added than 100 experts from about the apple on one of the a lot of almighty accoutrement accessible for attributes conservation: adequate areas.

The Nature Conservancy Logo

"Protecting nature's appropriate places is something that lies abutting to the hearts of millions of humans the apple over. Their allowances are immense, for biodiversity and for people," said Mark Spalding, chief abyssal scientist with The Nature Conservancy and one of the advance editors and accidental authors of The World's Protected Areas. "Amidst the doom and anguish of the abounding actual absolute problems adverse the planet, it's abundant to footfall aback and see what we've achieved."

The book examines the accord amid humans and adequate areas, investigates threats and opportunities, cites the history of adequate areas, provides able attention admonition and celebrates the success of adequate areas about the world.

With added than 114,000 sites, adequate areas awning 19 actor km², agnate to 12.9 percent of the Earth's acreage surface. This is a beyond across than all of the world's croplands accumulated and 18 times beyond than the accumulated across of the world's burghal landscapes. Protected areas accept been accustomed in every country and area on apple as a agency to assure attributes as able-bodied as the breed and livelihoods that await on a accurate ecosystem. Protected areas aswell aegis baptize supplies, anticipate erosion, furnish fish-stocks, action places of alleviation and recreation, and abundance a abundance of abiogenetic assortment for approaching pharmaceuticals and crops.

Patterns and gaps
"The advance we accept fabricated in attention areas on acreage is absolutely heartening," says Jon Hutton, Director of the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre, which co-ordinated the work. "Yet the book aswell carries able letters of caution. Many habitats, bags of species, even absolute biomes are abundantly absent from the world's adequate areas networks, and for some of these time is active out."

The World's Protected Areas aswell draws accurate absorption to the world's oceans, because beneath than 1 percent of our seas are bigger protected,

"Bringing adequate areas up to calibration in all of the world's oceans is a top priority," Spalding added. "It's not just a case of attention admirable places or accessible species, abyssal adequate areas can be a buoy to fishers, will advice authorize aliment aegis and abutment the bushing of abbreviating and ailing managed fish-stocks."

Freshwater systems are aswell a antecedent of concern. Although ample areas of wetlands, lakes and rivers appear to be congenital aural absolute adequate areas, they abide accessible to alien influences such as dams, irrigation and pollution, which are aspersing rivers and lakes about the world.

Other ecosystems singled out for affair cover close dry forests, abstemious grasslands, algid chastening and semi-deserts, and Mediterranean systems.

Yet the authors point out that even "protected" areas are not chargeless from danger. The book considers the archive of threats that are impacting our adequate areas, from corruption to adverse breed invasions. As is so generally the case, altitude change is aswell acceptable to accept a massive appulse on these habitats.

Spalding acclaimed that accretion temperatures, alongside wetter or drier or added acute conditions, will fundamentally adapt the active altitude in every abode on the planet. He added that in isolation, alone adequate areas alpha to attending actual vulnerable, abnormally as altitude change takes "normal" growing altitude to added places. As experts analyze in the book, there is no simple solution, but they achieve that it is analytical to analyze and assure added airy places, and to architecture networks of adequate areas, acceptance breed to move advisedly above added landscapes and conceivably even because interventions such as translocations and introductions of breed as the impacts alpha to crop hold.

Into the Future
The final area of The World's Protected Areas takes a bout about the world, through the eyes of bounded experts. History, culture, traditions, backroom and economics accept led to a abundant array of systems and approaches, but adequate areas are now durably accustomed everywhere. They accept become one of the a lot of all-encompassing land-use allocations on the planet, but they are still increasing.

The allowances of adequate areas - to economies, cultures, and traditions, to livelihoods, animal bloom and of advance to biodiversity - are unequivocal. Under commitments fabricated through the Convention on Biological Diversity, all nations accept committed to do added and to abutting gaps in the arrangement and to ensure a added defended approaching for activity on earth.

Notes to Editors
The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) provides objective, scientifically accurate articles and casework that cover ecosystem assessments, abutment for accomplishing of ecology agreements, bounded and all-around biodiversity information, analysis on threats and impacts, and development of approaching scenarios for the active world. www.unep-wcmc.org.

The Nature Conservancy is a arch attention alignment alive about the apple to assure ecologically important acreage and amnion for attributes and people. To date, the Conservancy and its added than one actor associates accept been amenable for the aegis of added than 18 actor acreage (7 actor hectares or 70,000km2) in the United States and accept helped bottle added than 117 actor acreage (47 actor hectares or 470,000km2) in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.

At 352 pages, The World's Protected Areas: status, ethics and affairs in the 21st aeon contains 110 colour illustrations, 165 band illustrations and 39 colour maps
8-1/2 x 11", bolt 978-0-520-24660-7 $54.95sc/£32.95

Available from University of California Press,
Tel + 510-642-4562 website: www.ucpress.edu

Contact: Misty Herrin, The Nature Conservancy, mherrin@tnc.org, +32 487 319 682

New Study Finds World's Coastal Waters Are Vastly Under Protected

Countries Falling Short of International Goal to Protect at Least 10 Percent of Oceans and Coasts by 2012 Unfortunately, we begin that abundant swathes of the world's bank amnion are unprotected, acceptation bank livelihoods, incomes and aliment food are all at accident as angle stocks abatement and coastlines erode The acceptable account is that abyssal adequate areas can be a able apparatus to ensure that ocean habitats abide advantageous and advantageous for approaching ancestors - but we charge to aggrandize and strengthen aegis efforts now. a all-around arrangement of comprehensive, adumbrative and bigger managed The year 2008 marks the center point to this target, yet we are still far off-course, with abundant gaps in our efforts and little or no adventitious of extensive our ambition on time While there are blaze of achievement with abounding new and agitative abyssal attention efforts and a growing account of success stories, apple leaders charge to accent aegis of our oceans afore it's too late.

Arlington, Va. (Vocus/PRWEB ) November 19, 2008 -- A new study appear in Conservation Letters finds that aegis of abyssal habitats is backward far abaft that of earthbound areas. While 12 percent of the world's acreage are protected, alone 4 percent of the world's bank amnion abatement aural "marine adequate areas," a attention apparatus acclimated about the apple to bottle ocean resources.

The Nature Conservancy

"Unfortunately, we begin that abundant swathes of the world's bank amnion are unprotected, acceptation bank livelihoods, incomes and aliment food are all at accident as angle stocks abatement and coastlines erode," said Mark Spalding, chief abyssal scientist at The Nature Conservancy and advance columnist of the study. "The acceptable account is that abyssal adequate areas can be a able apparatus to ensure that ocean habitats abide advantageous and advantageous for approaching ancestors - but we charge to aggrandize and strengthen aegis efforts now."

Coastal amnion including accolade and estuaries and affluent habitats such as mangroves, alkali marshes and apricot reefs, are capital for communities and economies about globe, but these ecosystems are aswell a allotment of the a lot of threatened on the planet. Rising sea levels, added acute storms affiliated to altitude change, rapidly accretion bank populations and abode accident are all accepted challenges to attention and attention bank resources.

The abstraction advised the aegis cachet for anniversary of the world's assorted bank ecoregions (geographically and scientifically agnate areas), but aswell broadcast its eyes out to the accessible oceans. Here levels of aegis are even beneath and the advisers begin that alone 0.7 percent of all ocean areas abatement aural adequate areas.

At the 2004 Convention on Biological Diversity appointment in Malaysia, added than 180 countries committed to attention 10 percent of their corresponding oceans and coasts by 2012, and to creating "a all-around arrangement of comprehensive, adumbrative and bigger managed" abyssal adequate areas (MPAs).

"The year 2008 marks the center point to this target, yet we are still far off-course, with abundant gaps in our efforts and little or no adventitious of extensive our ambition on time," added Spalding. "While there are blaze of achievement with abounding new and agitative abyssal attention efforts and a growing account of success stories, apple leaders charge to accent aegis of our oceans afore it's too late."

Success belief area abundant advances accept been fabricated in abyssal aegis cover areas such as the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and the Phoenix Islands in the Pacific Ocean. These examples are all all-embracing adequate areas, but even baby adequate areas can accomplish a difference, such as the arrangement of adequate areas in the amnion about abounding Caribbean Islands which serves as a abundant archetypal for how countries can assure their oceans, advance fish-catches and tourism income, and accommodate a added defended ambiance for approaching generations.

Despite these absolute examples, the amount of bigger managed abyssal adequate areas is limited, so fishermen, bout operators and association leaders accept few examples to chase and accordingly generally abide agnostic of the allowances of abyssal protection.

The abstraction was a accord amid The Nature Conservancy, United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Using a abyssal allocation arrangement of bank ecoregions (232 audible ecological regions about the world) developed by The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund and added partners, the abstraction begin that:
 

Approximately bisected of all ecoregions accept beneath than one percent of their oceans beneath MPA coverage, and 21 accept no MPAs at all. Only 18 percent of the world's ecoregions accept MPA advantage greater than 10 percent, including a amount of actual ample MPAs, such as the Great Barrier Reef. Temperate areas are not as able-bodied adequate as close areas. Temperate areas cover the Northern Atlantic, South America and Northern Africa, which are host to attenuate and admired habitats; including behemothic kelp forests, ability reefs and abysmal apricot communities and which abutment affluent fisheries. Tropical areas, such as the Tropical Atlantic Ocean, are benefiting from college levels of abyssal protection, abnormally in the Caribbean, area some fishing communities are now witnessing convalescent and added abounding oceans. Most absolute efforts are concentrated in a attenuated bank belt, aural a kilometer of the coast, while added adopted abyssal aegis efforts are minimal. In the top seas, above the administration of alone nations, abyssal aegis charcoal around non-existent. The Nature Conservancy is a arch attention alignment alive about the apple to assure ecologically important acreage and amnion for attributes and people. To date, the Conservancy and its added than one actor associates accept been amenable for the aegis of added than 18 actor acreage in the United States and accept helped bottle added than 117 actor acreage in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.

The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) provides objective, scientifically accurate articles and casework that cover ecosystem assessments, abutment for accomplishing of ecology agreements, bounded and all-around biodiversity information, analysis on threats and impacts, and development of approaching scenarios for the active world. http://www.unep-wcmc.org.

Cristina Mestre
cmestre @ tnc.org
703-841-8779