The struggle to safeguard wild lands and species doesn’t end when a park or protected area is created. In fact, social scientists and conservationists are increasingly uncovering a global trend whereby even long-established protected areas come under pressure by industrial, governmental, or community interests. This phenomenon, recently dubbed PADDD (which stands for Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing, and Degazettement), includes protected areas that see their legal status lowered (downgraded), lose a section of their land (downsized), or are abolished entirely (degazetted). Now, a new website from WWF seeks to track PADDD events worldwide. WWF hopes the new interactive site will help raise awareness and dialogue about the practice of downgrading and shrinking the world’s protected areas. Because keeping track of every proposal to downgrade, downsize or abolish a park, is a herculean task. Therefore the website also allows users to add information and create new incidents of PADDD.
Anybody, anywhere in the world, can directly contribute their knowledge of PADDD. Just go to www.PADDDtracker.org. It only takes a few clicks to get started
(Roopa Krithivasan, WWF social scientist) For more information read the article on Mongabay.com.
