Protected areas, which restrict activities perceived to be harmful for resources of interest, are a central element of Western conservation thought. Since the late 1800s, protected areas in the western US have served an essential role in safeguarding sensitive and culturally important resources and landscapes from destruction by their primary threats: urban/suburban development and natural resource extraction. However, the primary threat to western US landscapes is now uncharacteristic landscape disturbances, including megafires and megadroughts, that can erase protected areas and the sensitive resources they contain from the map in one fell swoop. This raises the question: are protected areas still working in the era of mega-disturbance? In this talk, I will discuss the unintended consequences of well-meaning protectionism in California and in the Northwest Forest Plan area, and specifically as it relates to the conservation of old-forest habitats of the California spotted owl and the southern Sierra Nevada fisher. Recent empirical evidence suggests that habitat loss for these species may be occurring more rapidly in protected areas than in unprotected areas, warranting a re-evaluation of traditional static models of conservation to more dynamic models that seek to conserve natural dynamics as opposed to static desired conditions.