This paper exploits World Development Indicators and IUCN Red-List data to empirically assess the socioeconomic and environmental drivers of conservation efforts. In addition to spatial spillovers, our results firstly indicate that forest cover, income level along with good political institutions positively drive protected areas (PAs), while human population growth conflicts with nature conservation efforts. Secondly, indicators of biodiversity (species richness and extinction risk) are found to be statistically neutral to PAs share, suggesting that species-rich countries are not predominantly the ones sheltering the largest PAs share. As species-poor forests matter as well, in addition to ecosystem centered approaches, our results encourage conservation practitioners to further account for species richness and extinction risks in establishing and managing PAs.