The futures of privately protected areas

Privately protected areas deserve far greater recognition and support than is the case at the moment. Private conservation efforts can often fill important gaps in national policies in terms of both geographic cover and speed of response to conservation challenges, yet they remain a hidden resource: ignored by governments, omitted from international conservation reporting mechanisms and left out of regional conservation strategies. To date, the large majority of protected areas have been created on state-owned lands and waters, and while such initiatives are invaluable, they will not be enough to achieve the targets set by the Convention of Biological Diversity: 17 per cent of land and freshwater area and 12 per cent of coastal and marine areas. With this report, another major governance type, protected areas under private ownership, is receiving long-overdue recognition, and the hope is that it will bring them fully into the mainstream of global conservation practice.