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Environmental Indicator K4: 2025 update on the extent of Protected Areas in the UK Overseas Territories 2026

Abstract

The Environmental Improvement Plan (Defra 2025a) outlines the UK Government’s aspirations to improve the natural environment and restore nature, including supporting the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs) to deliver their conservation priorities. Accompanying the plan is a comprehensive set of 66 indicators – the Environmental Indicator Framework – which show how the environment is changing and whether our interventions are being effective at restoring nature (Defra 2019, Defra 2025b).

Protected areas (PAs) are recognised as a priority conservation intervention by many UKOT Governments, as set out in the UKOT Biodiversity Strategy (UK Government, 2025). Environmental Indicator K4, published by Defra as part the Environmental Indicator Framework, measures the extent and condition of terrestrial and marine PAs and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) across the UKOTs combined.

While work to progress the protected area condition aspect of this indicator is ongoing, JNCC maintains a time series of yearly PA extent and coverage results from a base year of 2020. This report (JNCC Report 825) presents a fifth update, including protected areas and OECMs established to the end of 2025, and provides disaggregated results and technical information to accompany Environmental Indicator K4. The results for 2020 to 2024 were presented in JNCC reports 679, 704, 735, 760 and 792 respectively, available from The National Archives.

The whole time series is revised and republished annually to reflect the latest information and account for any corrections or improvements to underlying datasets. Aggregated and Territory-level statistics are also published on a dedicated JNCC webpage and are available to download in the Excel spreadsheet accompanying this report.

These resources may not be fully accessible for all users. If you need copies in a different or more accessible format, please contact Communications@jncc.gov.uk.

Resource type Publication

Topic category Environment

Reference date 2026·06·01

Citation
Wright, H.L. 2026. Environmental Indicator K4: 2025 update on the extent of Protected Areas in the UK Overseas Territories. JNCC Report 825, JNCC, Peterborough, ISSN 0963-8091.

Lineage
This report presents the extent of protected areas in the UK Overseas Territories up to the end of 2025, as part of Environmental Indicator K4. Previous reports presented the extent of protected areas in 2020 (JNCC Report 679), 2021 (JNCC Report 704), 2022 (JNCC Report 735), 2023 (JNCC Report 760) and 2024 (JNCC Report 792).

Responsible organisation
Communications, JNCC publisher

Limitations on public access No limitations

Use constraints Available under the Open Government Licence 3.0

Metadata date 2026·06·24

Metadata point of contact
Communications, JNCC

Temporal extent 2020·12·31 2025·12·31

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