On Monday, The European Environment Agency published an overview of European protected areas, which at the moment cover one fifth of the EEA member countries’ territory. At a first glance, the report seems to provide a very useful reference manual about how different national and European schemes come together to form a network of areas subject to various policy and management schemes.
Protected Areas in Europe couples nicely with Protected Planet Report 2012, which was published by the IUCN and UNEP-WCMC in September. Protected Planet Report goes into measuring progress towards the UN Convention on Biological Diversity targets at a global level.