Protected Areas

A traditional measure for maintaining the ability of forests to provide a range of ecosystem services, particularly regulating and cultural services, has been to establish protected areas. Protected areas are clearly defined geographical regions that are recognized, dedicated, and managed by legal or other effective means to achieve the long-term conservation of nature and associated ecosystem services.¹ Protected areas have some form of permanent designation, preventing the conversion of a natural ecosystem and prescribing the types of use of the ecosystem. The southern United States currently contains approximately 39.5 million acres of protected areas—many of them forested—distributed throughout the region (Figure 5.1).

The majority of protected areas in the South are federally owned, while the rest are owned by state and local governments, nongovernmental organizations, or private citizens. For example, the federal government owns approximately 29.8 million acres, including 12.9 million acres in national forests, 5.4 million acres in national parks, and 3.8 million acres in wildlife refuges. The 13 southern states combined own approximately 3.6 million acres of state forests and 1.7 million acres of state parks.

Not all protected areas, however, confer the same degree of ecosystem protection. The Gap Analysis Program (GAP) defines several levels of protection (Box 5.1). For instance, “status 1” confers permanent protection from land conversion and precludes extractive activities, while “status 3” confers permanent protection from conversion but allows extractive activities such as logging and mining. The network of protected areas in the South includes all three classifications (Figure 5.2). Approximately 12.8 percent of southern forests are currently located within these protected areas (Figure 5.3), with 1.1 percent under status 1 protection, 3.8 percent under status 2, and 7.9 percent under status 3.

Protected areas typically entail land uses that reduce the potential for revenue. Protected areas therefore need to be financed, which can be done through a variety of approaches. For instance, governments utilize funds from annual appropriations or from dedicated government revenue streams. An example of the latter is the U.S. Land and Water Conservation Fund, which finances the creation and expansion of parks, open spaces, wildlife refuges, and other natural areas via a royalty on offshore oil and gas extraction. Another approach that has proven popular across the United States is the ballot initiative, in which citizens vote on and approve conservation-oriented bonds or taxes at the local or state level. Between 2000 and mid-2009, voters across the United States approved more than $36 billion in conservation funds to finance the protection of forests and other open spaces.²