In case it sometimes feels like we’ve never done anything good for the wild parts of our planet, take a look at these stats from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

My piece, ‘Can One Incredibly Stubborn Person Save a Species?’ is about one conservation success story: Mexican biologist Enreiqueta Velarde, who has singlehandedly brought two bird species back from the brink of extinction on an Island off the coast of Mexico. Happily, Velarde’s story is part of a larger trend. Since 1872 we’ve taken a once radical idea-preserving nature-and scaled it up globally with amazing speed.

According to the WDPA:

As of 2008 there are >120,000 protected areas covering a total of about 8 million square miles (~21 million square kilometers) of land and sea
That’s an area more than twice the size of Canada
Terrestrial protected areas cover 12.2 percent of the Earth’s land area
Marine protected areas cover 5.9% of Earth’s territorial seas and 0.5% of extraterritorial seas

There’s still much variation from nation to nation:

Only 45 percent of 236 assessed countries and territories have >10 percent of […]