Protected areas of the United States

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
John Muir (1838–1914), one of the main inspirations for the U.S. national park system.
"Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation ?" - John Muir.[1]

The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation. As of 2022, the 42,826 protected areas covered 1,235,486 km2 (477,024 sq mi), or 13 percent of the land area of the United States.[2] This is also one-tenth of the protected land area of the world.[citation needed] The U.S. also had a total of 871 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,240,000 sq mi (3,200,000 km2), or 26 percent of the total marine area of the United States.[3]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Carley01 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "United States of America". Protected Planet. World Database on Protected Areas. 2022. Retrieved 2022-08-05.
  3. ^ "National Marine Protected Areas Center". marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov. Retrieved 2023-08-27.