Data from: Forest loss in protected areas and intact forest landscapes: a global analysis

In spite of the high importance of forests, global forest loss has
remained alarmingly high during the last decades. Forest loss at a global
scale has been unveiled with increasingly finer spatial resolution, but
the forest extent and loss in protected areas (PAs) and in large intact
forest landscapes (IFLs) have not so far been systematically assessed.
Moreover, the impact of protection on preserving the IFLs is not well
understood. In this study we conducted a consistent assessment of the
global forest loss in PAs and IFLs over the period 2000–2012. We used
recently published global remote sensing based spatial forest cover change
data, being a uniform and consistent dataset over space and time, together
with global datasets on PAs’ and IFLs’ locations. Our analyses revealed
that on a global scale 3% of the protected forest, 2.5% of the intact
forest, and 1.5% of the protected intact forest were lost during the study
period. These forest loss rates are relatively high compared to global
total forest loss of 5% for the same time period. The variation in forest
losses and in protection effect was large among geographical regions and
countries. In some regions the loss in protected forests exceeded 5% (e.g.
in Australia and Oceania, and North America) and the relative forest loss
was higher inside protected areas than outside those areas (e.g. in
Mongolia and parts of Africa, Central Asia, and Europe). At the same time,
protection was found to prevent forest loss in several countries (e.g. in
South America and Southeast Asia). Globally, high area-weighted forest
loss rates of protected and intact forests were associated with high gross
domestic product and in the case of protected forests also with high
proportions of agricultural land. Our findings reinforce the need for
improved understanding of the reasons for the high forest losses in PAs
and IFLs and strategies to prevent further losses.