Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of global conservation action and the most effective strategy for conserving the Earth’s biodiversity. Nevertheless, there is evidence that PAs are increasingly viewed by politicians and policy-makers as opportunity costs that constrain economic development. In the absence of societal resistance (‘push-back’) in the form of campaigns and/or lobbying, such attitudes leave many PAs vulnerable to downgrading, downsizing or degazettement (PADDD). The potential to mobilize public support for any given PA is difficult to directly measure, but is likely to be strongly correlated with contemporary levels of public interest and awareness. Here, we use Wikipedia page views (PVs) as a novel digital metric of public interest in PAs and demonstrate its utility through an analysis of Brazilian PAs. Because Brazil accounts for the vast majority of the World’s Portuguese speakers, we were able to generate separate metrics for national (PVs of Portuguese editions) and international (PVs of English editions) interest. We found that both national and international public interest is highest for larger, older PAs, especially National Parks. These results possibly reflect a historical bias towards designating the most iconic areas in the country first, with less scenic and more contested areas designated more recently. We also found that many PAs do not have a Wikipedia page, and many of those that do are rarely viewed by the public. The apparent low level of interest in these parks leaves them particularly vulnerable to development threats and, in our opinion, needs to be urgently addressed.

保护区 (PA) 是全球保护行动的基石，也是保护地球生物多样性的最有效战略。然而，有证据表明，政治家和政策制定者越来越多地将 PA 视为限制经济发展的机会成本。在没有以运动和/或游说形式出现的社会抵制（“回击”）的情况下，这种态度使许多保护区容易受到降级、缩小规模或去土地化 (PADDD) 的影响。动员公众支持任何特定 PA 的潜力很难直接衡量，但很可能与当代公众兴趣和意识水平密切相关。在这里，我们使用维基百科页面浏览量 (PV) 作为衡量公共利益的新型数字度量标准，并通过对巴西公共利益的分析证明其效用。因为巴西占世界葡萄牙语使用者的绝大多数，我们能够为国家（葡萄牙语版本的 PV）和国际（英语版本的 PV）兴趣生成单独的指标。我们发现，国家和国际公共利益对于较大、较老的保护区，尤其是国家公园来说是最高的。这些结果可能反映了历史上的偏见，即首先指定该国最具标志性的地区，而最近指定的风景较少且争议较多的地区。我们还发现，许多 PA 没有维基百科页面，而且许多有的页面很少被公众查看。这些公园明显的低兴趣使它们特别容易受到发展威胁，我们认为需要紧急解决。