Abstract
In recent years there has been global agreement on the realization that, with natural resources being exploited beyond the limits of their capacity and ecosystems becoming severely impaired, it must be a global concern to protect precious or characteristic natural and cultural landscapes. Mountain areas play a special role in this respect. Of the total acreage of protected areas, almost a third is situated in mountain regions. In his inventory of protected mountain areas, Thorsell (1997) only lists areas with a minimum size of 10,000 ha and a relative altitudinal difference of at least 1,500 m, which moreover correspond to the IUCN protection criteria (International Union for the Conservation of Nature).
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Borsdorf, A., Stadel, C. (2015). Conservation and Protected Areas. In: The Andes. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03530-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03530-7_3
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