The Canopy Global 1000 ranks the world’s land protected areas by conservation value: how irreplaceable the species they hold are, how connected they are to other protected land, and how intact they are, weighted by size. Plant data is being added to the ranking, so both versions are shown side by side. Neither is the final word.
Without plants, Royal Belum State Park ranks 151 of 1,000. With plants it ranks 188. It stays in the top 300 either way, which is why it is here.
Management-effectiveness ratings published outside Canopy, each on its publisher’s own scale. They are not PACE scores, some are self-assessments, and different methods and years are never converted into one another or ranked together.
Conservation Assured | Tiger Standards (CA|TS) accreditation, 2023: CA|TS Approved. The scale’s categories, in the publisher’s order: CA|TS Approved, CA|TS Registered.
Assessor: CA|TS independent review process; reviewers not named on retrieved page. Accreditation status against tiger-site standards; not a graded effectiveness score.
Scale: CA|TS accreditation status against the tiger-site management standards. A pass status, not a graded score. Source: WWF Tigers Alive Annual Report 2023: CA|TS accreditation of Royal Belum; Section: First site in Southeast Asia awarded CA|TS accreditation. Retrieved 2026-10-05. Exact park name and manager (Perak State Parks Corporation) match the cohort entity.
GEF METT reported as a percentage in a project evaluation, 2018: 72.5 percent, on a 0 to 100 scale.
Assessor: Perak State Parks Corporation (PSPC) self-assessment with project support, reported in the independent terminal evaluation. Table 11 shows the same 2018 score rounded to 73%.
Scale: METT score expressed as a percentage, as published in a GEF project evaluation. Project-run assessment; not comparable across projects without checking the METT version. Source: UNDP-GEF Malaysia PA effectiveness and financing project terminal evaluation; Results framework Indicator 2 (PDF p. 98), Royal-Belum, 2018. Retrieved 2026-10-05. Royal Belum State Park is named directly; one row per site.
Sources checked for this area:
WWF Tigers Alive Initiative: Tigers Alive Annual Report 2023: Secure Connected Habitat. CA|TS Approved status and award timing checked directly.
UNDP Evaluation Resource Centre / GEF: Midterm Review: Improving Connectivity in the Central Forest Spine Landscape (IC-CFS), GEF 4732 / UNDP PIMS 4594. Landscape-level review only; no park-level METT score.
UNESCO World Heritage Centre: UNESCO World Heritage Convention: Malaysia (State Party page). Not an inscribed World Heritage property or component; no IUCN World Heritage Outlook assessment exists.
UNDP Evaluation Resource Centre / GEF: Terminal Evaluation: Enhancing Effectiveness and Financial Sustainability of Protected Areas in Malaysia, UNDP PIMS 3967 / GEF 3906, 2020. Row for Royal Belum State Park (Perak State Parks Corporation) read directly; counted.
Retrieved 2026-10-05. A park with no rating here may still have one that was not found or could not be cited from a primary document.
4.23 million tonnes of carbon inside the boundary is irrecoverable: if it were lost, it could not be recovered by 2050.
1,209 km² of the area was forest in 2000, 100% of it. 0.9 km² of that forest was lost between 2001 and 2024, 0.1% of the 2000 cover.
Forest means at least 30% tree canopy in 2000. Loss counts any clearing, including fire and natural disturbance, not only deforestation.
Canopy’s PACE management score, its country readiness score (C-RISK) and its weekly satellite feeds cover African protected areas today. They have not been published for this area.
| WDPA id | 555705776 |
|---|---|
| Canopy Global 1000 list | October 2026 edition |
| Boundary and area source | WDPA-Jun2026 |
| Forest source | Hansen Global Forest Change v1.12 |
| Carbon source | Noon et al. (2022) |
| Canonical URL | https://canopyconservation.com/park/royal-belum-state-park |
UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2026), Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) [June 2026], Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Available at: www.protectedplanet.net.
Hansen, M. C. et al. (2013), High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change, Science 342: 850-853. Data: Global Forest Change 2000 to 2024, v1.12, University of Maryland, CC BY 4.0.
Noon, M. L. et al. (2022), Mapping the irrecoverable carbon in Earth’s ecosystems, Nature Sustainability 5: 37-46, doi:10.1038/s41893-021-00803-6.
How the Canopy Global 1000 is built: the method is available to signed-in readers; ask for access.
If you manage or work with this protected area and something here is wrong or out of date, tell us. Every correction is reviewed.
Everything here is free to use. The one condition is attribution.
Canopy (2026). Royal Belum State Park, Malaysia: Canopy Global 1000 rank 151 without plants, 188 with plants. Canopy Conservation, October 2026 edition. Retrieved from https://canopyconservation.com/park/royal-belum-state-park
https://canopyconservation.com/park/royal-belum-state-park
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