Global biodiversity protection requires the development of protected areas that include representative samples of different ecosystems and their associated biodiversity (Dudley 1992, Scott et al. 2001a). I compared long-term decline and protection of forests in three major biomes; boreal, temperate and tropical. I found that forests in the temperate biome are less abundant and less protected than forests in the boreal and tropical biomes. I conducted regional analyses for five continents on the degree of protection of temperate forests across naturally occurring geographic and elevational ranges. My results indicate that protected temperate forests do not represent the full geographic and elevational range of naturally occurring temperate forests. Bias in location, elevation and slope of protected areas are present at both the regional and global scale. Better protection of temperate forests is needed if the diversity and resources associated with these forests types across their geographic range is to be preserved.