[talk-au] Distinguish between National, State etc parks

[Dale]

"How do we distinguish between National Parks, State Parks, State  
Forests and
the like?
Have started adding forest areas from the landsat imagery and have been
attributing as "natural=wood", but I haven't found anything that  
would allow
me to better distinguish these areas. Obviously a National park is  
totally
different from a State Park in terms of what can/not be done. It  
would also
be good to link the polygons off to the relevant web site (such as
www.parkweb.vic.gov.au in the case of Victoria).
This issue isn't as simple as stipulating a "manager" because some  
National
Parks not managed by Parks Victoria etc.
Thoughts?
Cheers"

In Victoria the National Parks Act 1975 (NPA) describes a number of  
different land tenures:
National Parks
State Parks (to all intents identical in terms of what can be done/ 
not done to NPs by regulation)
Marine National Parks
Marine Sanctuaries
and a couple of others. The boundaries of the parks are described by  
a combination of the Act and the Certified Plan of each park. DSE  
website (www.dse.vic.gov.au) has PDF copies of the Cert plans.
In Victoria all scheduled parks under the NPA are managed by Parks  
Victoria.
There are a large number of other reserves with varying descriptors  
that are managed by PV. These are described by a wide range of  
Victorian legislation. To simply matter there is a master spatial  
dataset that describes each reserve/park and its boundaries for all  
of Victoria (ParkRes). I'd try getting hold of that via means  
legitimate. Write to DSE as the data custodian and see how you go.  
You could ask for Crown land tenure while you are at it.
To see this data in a spatial format go to DSE online mapping  
applications and have a look at the data there. eg:
http://nremap-sc.nre.vic.gov.au/MapShare.v2/imf.jsp?site=forestexplorer
I'd echo others that the best way of identifying land tenure in the  
case of protected areas is by name. I'd stay away from the detail of  
zoning (what you can and cannot do ) within parks  until the day  
comes all the boundaries are shown!The situation gets more confusing  
as the international use of National Park can cover all sorts of land  
tenure (Including private land) Ditto with other conventions.
Write to me directly for more info.