1.Front section - IUCN

Friends for Life: New partners in support of protected areas
Government-declared protected areas have a long
history. In the year 252 BC the Emperor Asoka of
India passed an edict for the protection of animals,
fish, and forests, the earliest documented
establishment of what we today call a protected area
(Gadgil, 1989). The first nature reserve in Indonesia
was established in 684 AD by order of the king of
Srivijaya, on the island of Sumatra (Schnitger, 1964).
Babar, the first Moghul Emperor of India, is said to
have hunted rhinos in special reserves established for
that purpose in the floodplains of the Punjab during
the 15th century (Gadgil, 1989). Forest reserves
covering some 20% of the island were established on
Tobago as early as 1764, designated as “reserved in
wood for rains”; rain reserves still exist today as the
oldest reserves of their kind in the world (Grove,
1992).
The modern protected area movement is generally
considered to have begun with the establishment of
Yellowstone National Park in the US State of
Wyoming 1872, though in fact Yosemite in California
was declared by the US Congress in 1864 as a
nationally-recognised area of outstanding interest to
the general public. Prior to Yellowstone, or even
Yosemite, colonial powers established various forms
of control over resource use in South Africa, India,
and other parts of their colonial empires. Protected
areas grew slowly until after World War II, but postwar
reconstruction, accelerating development, and
rapid population increase began to put greater
pressure on resources. Governments recognised that
pre-war forms of conservation were inadequate, and
that stronger measures were required to prevent
environmental degradation. In order to meet national
needs for an appropriate balance among economic
growth, resource exploitation, and conservation of
nature, governments over the past three or four
decades have invested heavily in planning and
establishing formal protected areas (Figure 1). These
sites have also extended government influence into the
most remote areas.
The early protected area networks grew in an ad hoc
fashion, focusing on remote areas with beautiful
scenery or plentiful wildlife but little value for other
forms of development, or building upon the hunting
or forest reserves established by local rulers or
colonial administrators. More recently, as the impact
of development on natural habitats has become more
Figure 1
Growth of protected areas
Number of sites
100,000
80,000
60,000
40,000
Cumulative area of sites of known date
Cumulative no. of sites of known date
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Note: 38,427 PAs covering approximately 4 million km have no date
and are not included in the cumulative graph
20,000,000
18,000,000
16,000,000
14,000,000
12,000,000
10,000,000
8,000,000
6,000,000
Area in km 2
20,000
4,000,000
2,000,000
0
0
1873
1878
1883
1888
1893
1898
1903
1908
1913
1918
1923
1928
1933
1938
1943
1948
1953
1958
1963
1968
1973
1978
1983
1988
1993
1998
2003
Year
Source: WCMC, 2004.
2