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Using six years of remote sensing data, we estimated land and forest degradation inside 1788 protected areas across 19 countries in Latin America. From 2004, the rate of land and forest degradation increased by 250% inside the protected areas, and the land and forest degradation totaled 1,097,618 hectares. Of the protected areas in our dataset, 45% had land and forest degradation. There were relatively large variations by major habitat type, with flooded grasslands/savannas and moist broadleaf forest protected areas having the highest rates of degradation. We found no association between a country's rate of land and forest degradation inside protected areas and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, GDP growth, or rural population density. We found significant, but weak, associations between the rate of land and forest degradation inside protected areas and a country's protected area system funding, the size of the protected area, and one International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) management category. Our results suggest a high degree of heterogeneity in the variables impacting land and forest degradation inside protected areas in Latin America, but that the targeting of protected area investments on a continental scale is plausible. OPEN ACCESSDiversity 2013, 5 780

In a recent essay on conservation education, David W. Orr proposed that students and faculty of academic institutions should turn their attention to solving real problems. He asked, "How might the efforts to solve real problems be made part of the conventional curriculum?" (Orr 1993). We at the University of Maryland's Graduate Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology agree with Orr. We developed a course that furnishes students of conservation biology with the opportunity not just to discuss problem-solving techniques, but to take part in addressing real-world conservation problems. Herein we provide a brief discussion of the methodology used to design that course.University curricula tend to be discipline-oriented, focusing on issues concerning a particular academic field of concentration. By contrast, conservation problems span several disciplines. Effective resolution of conservation problems requires professionals to think across disciplines rather than along strict disciplinary lines. If academia aspires to train professional conservation biologists capable of addressing real-world needs, then conservation biology graduate programs must incorporate interdisciplinary thinking into their academic programs. Failure to do so requires the graduate to make this transition on the job, with potentially negative consequences.The University of Maryland graduate program in conservation biology was established in 1991 to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to move directly into professional conservation positions. To design this type of graduate-level training we turned "Current addre$g. 10010 Columbine Streeg Great Falls, VA 22066, U.XA

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