Protected Areas Under Many Names, From Wilsons Promontory in 1898 to Kosterhavet in 2009

Wilsons Promontory forms the southernmost point of the Australian mainland and has been protected since 1898, first as a national park and later with a marine national park around it. It holds the largest coastal wilderness area in Victoria, and it had no road access until the 1930s.

The range was created as a National Wildlife Refuge on May 23, 1908, to conserve American bison, and it covers about 18,524 acres of grassland in western Montana. In 2022 management passed from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Established in 1947, this 301-hectare British Columbia park on Cameron Lake on Vancouver Island protects the delta of the Cameron River. It is best known for Cathedral Grove, a 157-hectare stand of ancient Douglas fir that sits beside Highway 4.

Founded in 1972 in the Cordillera de Tilarán, this Costa Rican reserve protects over 10,500 hectares of cloud forest. Its listed riches include more than 2,500 plant species, among them the most orchid species found in a single place, and about 400 bird species.

Created on December 19, 1973, Mochima spans about 94,935 hectares on Venezuela's northeastern coast. It joins a marine sector and coastal bays, including the Gulf of Santa Fe and Mochima Bay, to mountain forest in the Turimiquire Range.

This Nevada park near the Utah border protects about 77,180 acres. It is known for groves of ancient bristlecone pines, Lehman Caves, the Wheeler Peak Glacier below 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak, and some of the darkest night skies in the contiguous United States.

Established in 1990, this Central African Republic reserve covers about 6,865 square kilometres of Congo Basin rainforest and surrounds Dzanga-Ndoki National Park. It belongs to the Sangha Trinational shared with Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, and is known for forest elephants and western lowland gorillas.

Syria's largest natural lake is a seasonal saline lake and salt flat about 30 kilometres southeast of Aleppo. Part of it is a nature reserve and waterfowl site that was designated a Ramsar wetland on March 5, 1998, which shows protection resting on an international wetland listing.

Here protection is private. Roughly 12,000 of about 20,000 acres near Carmel, California, are held as nature reserve and 8,000 more as open land, with about 2,000 acres set aside for 297 home sites. The preserve opened in 1999 and most of it is protected in perpetuity through a conservation land trust.

Established in 2005 and recognized by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve in 2007, Al Reem covers about 120,000 hectares of semi-arid desert in northwest Qatar. It is an inhabited protected area, home to gazelles and Arabian oryx, and is valued for its comparatively dense vegetation.

Established on 17 January 2007 as the seventh national park of Taiwan, this marine park surrounds a circular atoll about 25 kilometres across in the northern South China Sea. It protects 3,537 square kilometres and is closed to tourism because of environmental restoration, safety concerns and research.

Inaugurated in September 2009, Kosterhavet is Sweden's first national marine park. It protects about 389 square kilometres of the Skagerrak around the Koster Islands, shelters the country's largest seal colony, and borders Norway's Ytre Hvaler marine park to the north.