A country can set aside large areas of forests with a low importance for biological diversity and continue to unsustainably harvest high valuable non-protected forests. Ideally, the protected forest area should cover representative examples of all existing forest ecosystems, with the area appropriate to their rarity or uniqueness. The indicator does not in itself provide information on the degree of protection, including the range of allowable uses. A more meaningful indicator would consider the proportion of forest protected area for each major ecosystem of the country. However, this may present problems of data availability.
Data are available on a regular basis for time series analysis.
For forest area, the data are often estimates, which are not always comparable because of changes in definitions and assessment methodologies. For protected areas which cover more than forested lands, it may be difficult to obtain a precise estimate of the area of the forested part due to a lack of good vegetation maps. At the national level, data should be available from forestry or natural resource management ministries. Guidelines for Protected Area Management Categories. Regional Reviews of Protected Areas.