These areas are only the protected areas owned by the State of West Virginia. The areas listed do not include National Parks, National Forests, National Wildlife Areas, Nature Conservancy lands, areas owned by The West Virginia Land Trust, or several state-owned and locally operated rail trails. WVhybrid 05:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

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Since the wilderness areas are all part of Monongahela National Forest, do they need their own pages? Brian Powell (talk) 00:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say yes. It seems to be the standard for other forests and there is a Wikiproject working on protected areas that will likely get around to them eventually. y'am'can (wtf?) 02:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I changed the name of the WMA to Anawalt Lake to match the DNR web page. The article will be written soon!WVhybrid (talk) 01:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The Andrew Rowan Farm Wildlife Management Area has become a private resort. So much for "protected area". See WV Dept. of Agriculture press release from 2007.
I have deleted the name from the protected area list. WVhybrid (talk) 01:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Should 14 National Wildlife Management Areas in WV be added to the "Protected Areas List"? And what about areas protected by the Nature Conservancy? They are probably a lot more protected than the leased state WMAs, as we have seen with the WMA in Monroe County. WVhybrid (talk) 02:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think that we should add the WMAs in the national forests. We've already split out the USFS-managed wilderness areas and the ones in question here are jointly managed by USFS and WVDNR. (See Image:Potomac Cooperative Wildlife Management Area.jpg).

I can go along with the Nature Conservancy sites, too. They make up some of the major protected areas in WV (like Cranesville Swamp) and, as WVhybrid note, presumably at least as stable as the WMAs. (Take a look at Berwind Lake Wildlife Management Area for another recent example of land vanishing due to a lease termination.)

I do think we need to look at splitting up the listings a bit. We can add the Cooperative WMAs to the WMA section, but maybe we need to split out USFS- and NPS-maintained ares to their own groups in the listing? Things are getting a bit crowded. Brian Powell (talk) 14:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)