%0 Journal Article
%T Walk on the Wild Side: Estimating the Global Magnitude of Visits to Protected Areas
%A Andrea Manica
%A Andrew Balmford
%A Charles Huang
%A James Beresford
%A Jonathan M. H. Green
%A Matt Walpole
%A Michael Anderson
%A Robin Naidoo
%J -
%D 2015
%R 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002074
%X How often do people visit the world¡¯s protected areas (PAs)? Despite PAs covering one-eighth of the land and being a major focus of nature-based recreation and tourism, we don¡¯t know. To address this, we compiled a globally-representative database of visits to PAs and built region-specific models predicting visit rates from PA size, local population size, remoteness, natural attractiveness, and national income. Applying these models to all but the very smallest of the world¡¯s terrestrial PAs suggests that together they receive roughly 8 billion (8 x 109) visits/y¡ªof which more than 80% are in Europe and North America. Linking our region-specific visit estimates to valuation studies indicates that these visits generate approximately US $600 billion/y in direct in-country expenditure and US $250 billion/y in consumer surplus. These figures dwarf current, typically inadequate spending on conserving PAs. Thus, even without considering the many other ecosystem services that PAs provide to people, our findings underscore calls for greatly increased investment in their conservation
%K Conservation science
%K Europe
%K Economic impact analysis
%K Ecosystems
%K North America
%K Africa
%K Economics
%K Recreation
%U https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002074