Despite significant expansion of the global protected
area (PA) network, this investment has not commonly
been matched by investment in their management.
This includes managing trade-offs between social and
biodiversity goals, including resource use in PAs.
While some resource-use activities receive significant
attention, the full suite of resources extracted
from PA systems is rarely documented. This paper
illustrates the potential risk of resource use to PA
ecological performance through a survey of resources
harvested in South Africa’s national parks. Even
for this comparatively well-managed suite of parks,
significant data gaps preclude assessments of harvest
sustainability. Harvest quantities were known for
< 8% of the 341 used resources, while 23% were not
identified to species level. International Union for the
Conservation of Nature Red List conservation status
had not been evaluated for 78% of species, and 31%
of all species (83% of marine species) had not been
evaluated nationally. Protected areas face ongoing
pressure to balance people-based and biodiversity
outcomes, but whether or not both objectives can be
achieved cannot be assessed without adequate data.
Managing PAs in future will require consideration
of trade-offs between investing in PA expansion,
increasing the monitoring and management capacity
of PA agencies, and investing in the research needed to
support decision making.