[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - protection_class=* (Words, not numeric codes)

Joseph Eisenberg joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com
Tue Apr 7 07:27:18 UTC 2020


> Currently there are two ways to tag a conservation area:
> boundary=national_park
> or
> boundary=protected_area + protect_class=1 to 7

There is also a third tag: leisure=nature_reserve, which is even more
common, and traditionally has been used for natural conservation areas
which are not National Parks or similar.

Used 110k times:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:leisure%3Dnature_reserve

I don’t expect leisure=nature_reserve or boundary=national_park to
disappear, but we can add additional tags to clarify the category of
nature reserve or protected area

Since a boundary=national_park already includes the term “National
Park” in the value and it can also be tagged with “protection_title”,
the only thing missing is a tag that specifically states the IUCN
category, since protect_class includes other values like 1, 7, 21, 97,
etc, and it appears that many mappers add protect_class without
actually checking the official IUCN category.

I suppose protect_class could be replaced by a new tag like
iucn_category= or iucn_level=, or protect_class be changed to only
include 1a,1b,2,3,4,5,6?

But if Wikidata is already storing this info, maybe we don’t need a tag for it?

— Joseph



More information about the Tagging mailing list