The road from Santa Marta winds along Colombia’s Pacific coast to Bogotá. It’s one-lane traffic and the path is dotted with potholes. Massive trucks idle in impossibly long lines: tankers, timber trucks and hazardous material transporters all share the same road because it is the only one that takes them to their destination. The landscape along the ride, though, is beautiful: lush, green mountains line the road, carpeted with palm and banana trees as well as ferns. But the idyllic scenery has a darker side, too: here, FARC guerrilla fighters used the thick green canopy to hide kidnapping victims and hold them until they received ransom money in return.

One of our planet’s greatest treasures is its incredible biodiversity: from oceans and jungles to deserts and swamplands, we’re lucky to have such a rich variety of animal and plant species. But environmentalists warn that climate change is rapidly eating away at the world’s biodiversity, especially in coastal regions and rainforests.

One of the answers to that problem has been creating protected habitats. According to a recent report from the Marine Ecology Progress Series, more than 100,000 protected areas – representing about 7 million square miles of land and 1 million square miles of ocean – have been designated in the last five decades.

But despite those conservation efforts, the diversity of species is falling, and fast. That makes one thing clear: creating protected habitats won’t be enough to slow the loss of biodiversity on our planet. Environmentalists say it will take a much bigger effort – and everyone will have to get involved.