Proposal talk:Conservation

This sort of tag is sorely missing from the map features, I just stumbled over one of the problems myself (someone had tagged a conservation area as "reservoir". :-). I was about to propose the same and will start using this tag. --Nop 15:30, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, really good idea - and very interesting from a tourism point of view. The field outside the back of our house is owned by Thames Water and managed as a low-key conservation area to preserve its wildlife, but I suspect no visitors to the town (and probably few residents) are aware of it. It'd be a great thing to have on a map. --Richard 15:37, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

The OS make an example of displaying National Trust land explicitly, this tag seems to be apt for this use. --Thomas Wood 19:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Worth noting that in the UK, at least, "Conservation Areas" can also apply to urban areas. "Conservation Areas are designated because they are areas of special architectural or historic interest which it is desirable to preserve or enhance". Crawley Conservation Areas Whilst being a type of planning restriction, often these areas are features in their own right, for example the Northern Quarter in Manchester, which has UNESCO World Heritage Site Status. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Quarter --Chippy 19:49, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

A problem of this feature is that it can overlap with other uses of land. While agriculture and forestry usually are restricted, it is quite common (at least here in Germany) that conservation areas are used as pastures or trees are felled. Tagging the areas as landuse=farm ore landuse=forest would therefore be correct as well. --Markobr 21:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

• One thing that has helped direct my thinking on this type of tag is looking at 'landuse' as 'zoning'. So if there is a forest there, that is natural=wood, but if it is *zoned* for Timber, then it is landuse=forest. I don't think, in general, the *same* area is both landuse=conservation and landuse=forest -- if it is, it's likely that the landuse=forest is a smaller area inside the larger conservation area... at least in the US. Crschmidt 04:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

1. If I understand your reply correct, you imply that no other landuse combination should ever occur and we should handle this e.g. with multipolygons. However, e.g. current "landuse=forest" means that the forest is managed (no natural wood) which is the regular case in Germany. In my opinion this mixes easily with the huge number of different strict or less strict land protection types. Browsing through the other landuse types, it is also doubtful to me whether we want to exclude all of those. We could probably avoid this only with an orthogonal tag, something like an access tag "conservation=yes". Question is whether this would still be easy to render. BTW, the same problem exists with current leisure=nature_reserve.
2. We should think about whether we want to tag the conservation type. In Germany there are many possibilities for conservation areas (Wikipedia:de:Schutzgebiete_in_Natur-_und_Landschaftsschutz), internationally probably too (Wikipedia:Protected_area). So "conservation=xx" might be even more flexible.
3. Is it planned to merge this with leisure=nature_reserve somehow?

Despite those comments, progress on any such tag is appreciated (in addition to the existing nature_reserve which is sometimes abused for this).--Rs 23:03, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I would like to merge this with both leisure=nature_reserve and boundary=national_park. They are both some kind of conservation areas. To distinguish what kind of are it really is we can use an admin_level and associate it with the IUCN categories. I highly feel that tis tag should render as a boundary and it could have an "inside" so the boundary line could be rendered in a way so it's easy to see on what side the conservation area is. It could also be rendered as a overlay pattern, but I think it will be messy if the areas underneath also have a pattern. Why not render as an area? What about marine conservation areas? Or areas that covers different biotopes. --Bengibollen 01:42, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Not a landuse. Boundary ?

We already have problems with landuse tags saying the statut of a place : e.g. military. Those places can be also landuse=forest/scrub/field/... and we are proposing a boundary=military_area rather than a landuse. It could be the same for the conservation statut : a boundary=conservation_area. FrViPofm 07:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree. There is boundary=protected_area which seems much more suited for these. Conservation is not really a landuse. It creates also problems, when several of these properties apply at once (e.g. a forest, which is a military area, and is protected as natural area as well). --Dieterdreist 10:56, 6 May 2012 (BST)

How is conservation not a landuse? Here there are corridors where the state is buying up land to preserve the wilderness, e.g. 1224752 1224752, as well as "conservation easements" where the owner agrees to let the state manage part of the land, e.g. 1231225 1231225. If there are other landuses that also apply, they can be mapped with separate overlapping polygons, like military housing. --NE2 18:26, 6 May 2012 (BST)

+1 for Tag:boundary=protected_area. And moving this tag to the map feature won't help I think. sletuffe 14:42, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I still don't get how this isn't a landuse. Landuse is the (human) use of the land. Conservation is a decision to leave the land unused, essentially a null landuse but with a deliberate nature. --NE2 23:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Protected nature

I still fail to see the difference between a conservation area and a nature reserve (or other forms of nature protections) or see the importance of differentiate between them on the topmost level.

What do we have? Some kind of area of nature that is protected for some reason. This are can include/overlap other areas like lakes, wetlands, forests of different types etc so it is pretty obvious that it's best defined by its borderline. So then we have a border around a protected area of nature. This is the least bit of information needed to describe any area of this type. You don't need to know specific laws or regulations that apply for this area to put it into osm. You can do it when you are in some other country than your own without tagging wrong (is it a national park, nature reserve, conservation area other types of protection) Just knowing that it is an area of protected nature should be enough. If you do know more about the area, great! Just add more information in _other_ tags. Is it internationally recognised as a certain type of protected area (IUCN Protected Area categories), does it have a different national designation (maybe IUCN says nature reserve while in this country it is called a national park or the other way around). Maybe it's another form of protection not mentioned by IUCN, some other open scale of measurement could be used. Similar to admin_level with well defined protection levels that can be used _internationally_ and a national designation that gives the correct term. In Sweden we have other types of protection for a specific type of animal, like bird or seal protection areas that limit access to the area that may or may not be limited to a specific time of the year. I'm just guessing that this isn't something unique and this should also be included.

This way we can collect any type of protected nature in one top level key-value combination. A similar scheme could be used for cultural protection. Like heritage sites, parks, buildings and such. --Bengibollen 12:49, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

conservation vs. nature reserve

It seems clear to me that leisure=nature_reserve doesn't work for all conservation lands, since those that are closed to the public don't make sense as "leisure". On the other hand, I can't think of a type of nature reserve that wouldn't be conservation. --NE2 19:50, 14 October 2010 (BST)

Have a look at boundary=protected_area --Dieterdreist 10:57, 6 May 2012 (BST)