Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Protected areas/Archive 1

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Hi G from B, the idea in general looks good to me. It is often very difficult to work out a template without actually applying it, so maybe some test pages would clarify a lot - you'll also get some new ideas, and people are more likely to comment on it.

As for the level 3 articles, I'm not sure they really deserve a separate article, you may want to include them on the country's page. On the other hand, a country like the US alone has a big bunch of state parks no managed by the NPS.

The "Protected areas in country X" articles could easily be linked in the WikiProject countries, f.e. in the geography section.

If a park with the same name exists in multiple countries, there is an easy solution. If the parks are really different, just disambiguate (the following is fictional):

In some cases, the parks will cross a border and will be really the same park, probably administered by both the countries' responsible services. In that case, there shouldn't be a problem in naming the page.

Jeronimo 05:57 Aug 7, 2002 (PDT)

Thanks for the advice, Jeronimo. I was planning on testing the template on a few areas to see how it works out and to adapt things if necessary (most probably it will be).
The level 3 articles are reserved for some countries only (probably the big ones). For example, Australia alone has more than 5000 protected areas and the great majority of them are managed on a state level. To group them all on one page would really not be a good idea. The USA would also be a serious candidate, but there are much more areas managed on a federal level. Furthermore, these areas cross state borders in a number of cases, so they're not good candidates to group on state pages. State parks, on the other hand, are.
Disambiguation is probably the best solution for areas with the same name. For international protected areas I included a link to such a page on the "Protected area" page (in the proposal).
Guy 06:46 Aug 7, 2002 (PDT)

Another idea: It is common in Wikipedia (and other encyclopedias) to start article with an introductory sentence/paragraph. The template proposed (at least level 4) does not have such an entry. An introduction paragraph (before the "fact-sheet") could briefly explain where the park is and why it is a park (main features, etc.). Jeronimo

Absolutely. It's more logical to have the description before the fact sheet. I have adapted the project accordingly. I also made a test article for level 3 (Protected areas of the Australian Capital Territory) and 4 (Namadgi National Park). Feel free to give other comments or improve the article if you like. -- Guy 06:50 Aug 8, 2002 (PDT)

Copied from User talk:Tiles and User talk:Dhum Dhum:

Hi Tiles, I noticed you have made a nice table to be used for national parks. I like it and I'd like to implement it in the articles. The table on your user page has the country and the state/territory included. I think that's better than the table in Dandenong Ranges National Park for example. I noticed there are quite a lot of stubs about Australian national parks, but there are much more countries with parks and reserves for which that table can be used. Do you think the table contains all the information that is necessary? What about including a picture? (I have quite a few of them which I made myself. BTW, I made the picture of the city you live in.) Cheers! D.D. 09:31 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Have a look at Organ Pipes National Park. Your opinion? D.D. 10:35 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm also working at a table with a locater map instead of a picture. The picture could be moved to another spot within the text area (there could be more than one picture). I'll have it ready in a few days. D.D. 21:14 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi DD. I've been playing with the table to try and get the best appearance see Kakadu National Park and Litchfield National Park. I really like your idea of including the picture. I'm also experimenting with images, and using scanned photographs from my own albums. A map locater would be a great addition and I look forward to seeing your work. Tiles 22:29 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Tiles, glad you liked my idea. On my user page you can see what I mean with a map locater. Of course, everything needs to be organised a little more than what's there now. There must be plenty of possibilities, we only have to choose the best one :-) If you want to experiment a bit with it, be my guest. D.D. 20:48 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi DD. Had a look at the table. It may be a bit too fussy with both the picture and the map. But it would be good to have both. I'll experiment. Where did you get the map? Tiles 21:12 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Tiles, I agree with you that having both the map and a picture in the table is probably too much. We'll have to find another way to include them in the article. As for the map, I took a simple map of Australia, cut out the part that I was interested in, changed some colours and there it was. I made similar maps for Queensland, the Northern Territory, South and Western Australia. All I have to do is place a red dot to show where the park is located. I had some other thoughts about the tables, pictures and maps that I'd like to discuss with you, but that'll have to wait a bit. I have to go off to work now :-( See you later! D.D. 05:41 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tiles, Here are some thoughts/ideas concerning the national parks tables:

  1. It's probably best to include either a picture or a map locater in the table. I have a slight preference for the map locater because it fits in quite nicely with the information given in the table.
  2. If we do decide to have the picture in the table we might choose one that shows the park's most important feature, the feature the park is named after or a panoramic view/landscape. Other pictures could be placed in the text area.
  3. Do we put the map locater (or picture) in the same table row as the park name (as in Kakadu National Park) or underneath it (as in Organ Pipes National Park)
  4. Do we need the heading "Fact Sheet"? As far as I'm concerned we could drop that.
  5. I'd set the state(s)/territor(y)(ies)/province(s) and country location as a table row (see Organ Pipes National Park) instead of above it (see Litchfield National Park on your user page).
  6. What do you think about following this order in the table: Location - Nearest City - Latitude - Longitude - Area - Date of Establishment - Governing bodies - IUCN Category? The first four all have something to do with its location, so I think they should be grouped together (and that's another reason why I prefer the map locater to be placed in the table - it obviously also helps to locate the park).
  7. I also think it's a good idea to put the table in the same spot in different articles (upper right corner?).

I'm curious about your comments and ideas. I'm convinced we can make something nice out of this :-) D.D. 19:33 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi DD. I picked up your comments and will respond at the weekend. Tiles 10:01 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Hi DD. I agree with all of your suggestions. The map locater should appear in the table in the same table row. We do not need "Fact Sheet" and I agree with your suggestion for the information in the table. It would be good to try and standardise the size of the pictures and the map locater . I'm still learning about sizing images so would appreciate any advice you can give me. I'll start amending the Litchfield National Park, Kakadu National Park and work away at the Northern Territory Parks. Tiles 21:51 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tiles, your idea of standardizing the pictures and the map locater is a good one. I'll try to answer your questions this evening (it's Saturday morning here in Belgium now). D.D. 08:02 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tiles, here's my answer as promised. As I said above, I find your suggestion of standardising the map locater and the pictures a good idea. Some thoughts:

  • One thing we should take into account about the map locater is that countries/states/provinces can have many different shapes (compact, elongated, irregular, ...). That's why I chose to divide Australia into 5 areas which are relatively equal in size (we could do the same with other countries). Of course the width and height (in pixels) of the map locaters of these areas vary. (e.g.: smallest width: 142 (NT), largest width: 235 (WA), smallest height: 215 (SA), largest height 347 (WA).) I think the most important measure is the width. What do you think of not letting it become higher than 300 pixels (the width you chose for the table)? According to the area's shape and relative size both width and height of the map locater can vary within certain limits, but the table width of 300 pixels can never be exceeded.
  • Since we're mentioning the nearest city to a park I was thinking of indicating that too on the map locater, and perhaps even the state capital or most important city.
  • The images I contribute are scans of my own slides. I'm uploading pictures of 300 x 200 pixels (width x height). I think these dimensions are OK for the articles, but I'd like to give the readers the possibility to view a larger version (like you have done in Kakadu National Park). How should I do that? Do I have to upload 2 versions of the same picture?

I'd like to know what you think of these things. Feel free to not disagree :-) D.D. 19:17 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi DD. I do not entirely not disagree. The table width seems to be right but the 300x200 pixel size might be a bit small, it depends on the subject. I was criticised for the small picture on Kakadu National Park. Have a look at the Talk page. I uploaded two versions of the image. One cropped and the other full size. I do not have slides and am scanning prints. I'll try the suggested image size and come back to you Tiles 05:57 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Oops! I just read your comment on my talk page and I realized I made a mistake in my last sentence. Of course it should read: Feel free to disagree (I must have been thinking of not agreeing and mixed them up. Sorry for the confusion!
BTW, I discovered a Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas where they have discussed a number of things concerning national parks etc... (but nothing has been contributed since October 2002) Have a look at it, it might be interesting. Perhaps we could use it as a base to further work out the articles. I'll copy our talk to that article's talk page. We could centralize our tals there? D.D. 10:41 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)


Hi DD. What a good discovery! We should work from this site. I have tried your suggestion of 300x200 pixels on Coober Pedy. It seems to work OK and I'll try it on Litchfield National Park. I see you have already imposed our standard on Namadgi National Park. What I need is the map locater templates you have developed. Can you post them here? Tiles 07:58 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tiles. I have uploaded the map templates. You can find them here. I'd also like to copy an "empty" table to one of the subpages for use in the various articles. I'll let you know where you can find it. D.D. 19:14 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
OK, that's done. I've simplified the table a bit. You can find it here. What do you think about it? Would that be something we could use in the articles? BTW, instead of cropping images for the small versions (300 x 200) we could use reduced versions of the larger ones (600 x 400 / 750 x 500 / 900 x 600 ?) D.D. 20:23 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi DD. It looks like we have no excuse not to get to work. Thanks for setting up the map locaters and the table. You're right about reducing the size of images. I am such a lousy photographer that I have to cut out the acres of sky or ground but I will use the reduction process on what's left. How would you like to split up the work? I would be happy to work on Northern Territory and Western Australia to start with. Would you like to get involved in another country? Should we try for some volunteers? Tiles 00:18 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tiles. Yes it's true, there's work to be done. The only thing is, being a husband and father with a full time job I won't be able to go very fast at adding tables and pictures. Anyway I'll do what I can. As for splitting up the work, go ahead and choose whatever you like. I have quite a lot of slides from all over Australia, so I was thinking of scanning and adding them. Do you object if I add some pictures of NT and WA parks? I also have some pictures of parks in New Zealand and Chile, and possibly some other countries. I might try to make the basic locator maps for a few other countries too. Of course other users can be involved if this topic interests them. D.D. 19:51 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi DD. Work does interfere with the wikipedia-ing (as my wife calls it), as does gardening, eating sleeping and going on holiday. Please climb into any area and don't consider any articles exclusive, this is wikipedia. I would love to use your images if you could locate them on a convenient page. I'm going to Western Australia on holiday at the end of the month (Broome and The Kimberleys) and will try and add some more. Tiles 21:01 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tiles. I'll generally upload my pictures to the appropriate page. Feel free to move them around if yoiu're also adding text. BTW, I created a link in this article where we can keep track of our progress. I see you have added the table to Keep River National Park. I have 2 observations: (1) The location of the park is not (yet) shown on the map locator (but maybe you're planning to do that?); (2) I'd say the nearest cities to this park are Kununnurra and Wyndham (both in WA) instead of Darwin. I'd also like to wish you a fantastic trip - the Kimberley is one of my favourite areas in Australia (Purnululu National Park is absolutely magnificent!) D.D. 19:25 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thank, DD. We are really looking forward to the trip. You are correct I will be adding the red dot to Keep River National Park when I learn how to do that. I am hoping to get to Kununnurra on this trip as we want to visit the Bungle Bungle ie Purnululu National Park . Can you have a look at the Organ Pipes National Park. On my browser the picture overlaps the table. I will be busy at work for the next week, creating time to go on leave, but will be back into things when I get back fron W.A. Tiles 08:25 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Tiles, I played around a bit with the Organ Pipes National Park page. Does this give better results in your browser? What I did was let the table find its own width (depending on its contents) and explicitly align the picture on the left side. I let the page be validated by http://validator.w3.org/ and there are no errors in it. Contrary to what we said before, it's maybe better to have a variable width of the table to avoid problems with picture overlapping in some browsers. We can always use the line break tag (<br>) if the page gets too wide. What do you think? D.D. 10:29 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi DD. The page looks much better and as the content is fairly standard, a variable width for the table should not be a problem. The validation page is a new one for me. Thanks for that. Tiles 20:42 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ok Tiles, I'll adapt the template in Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas/General. D.D. 20:55 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi guys. I've been working on some American National Parks (Yellowstone and Death Valley) and plan on working on many other parks, National Monuments and National Historic places (if I ever find time!). The table is neat but the gray fill color seems purely aesthetic. It would be neat to have different fill colors for each IUCN Protected Area Management Category (there are 7 I think). That way readers who know the color code can know, at a glance, what type of protected area the article is covering. Using different fill colors has been very successful for the elements of the periodic table and for the taxoboxes being worked on for organisms (see Kingdom (biology)). --mav 23:12 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Great idea! Tiles,, what do you think about it? I've tried to make a little table with possible colours (see here), but I'm not that good with colours. So please add other possibilities. D.D. 21:05 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I adapted Organ Pipes National Park accordingly. There is one thing that might be confusing: On the IUCN page National Parks are in category II. Organ Pipes is a National Park but it is category III. I guess there are other exceptions too. I'm not sure if we should take care of these "irregularities" or just leave them be and only focus on the IUCN category. D.D. 21:16 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The trouble here is just with nomenclature. The IUCN is a fairly objective and standard way to classify protected areas but different nations will use IUCN terms to label different things. So the types of protections that are offered, in say Australia, for what they call "National Parks" may be similar to what another nations, say the United States, calls a "National Monument." But the IUCN can be used as a standard reference point to compare different protected areas (since the naming criteria in each nation is going to be different). I like your color choices, BTW. --mav 21:32 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Anything that brightens up the pages of the wikipedia has my support. Let's get away from grey. Your colours look good to me, DD. I'll use them in future. Tiles 00:31 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Shouldn't we start thinking about agreeing on a (definite?) table layout? I have continued to test our latest ideas on Organ Pipes National Park (which has become some sort of a test page for me :-) I applied colour only around the map locator and left the title and the text part of the table white, which to me looks quite attractive. Applying colour over a larger area might make the table too heavy (especially if we use red and blue). I reintroduced a fixed table width of 280px (sorry if I'm changing opinions rather quickly about this - I'm just trying to find a good and workable proposal). You can have a look at the same table on Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas/General. If anyone has another proposal, please put an example of it there too, so we can compare more easily. D.D. 20:16 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm also still experimenting and also found that a fixed width for the table is better. I have tried adding the nearest city to the map as well as the park name. It seems to work but (see Nitmiluk National Park) I've not yet fixed on fonts. Your Organ Pipes layout looks good to me and I will adopt it. I must also fix up the image in Litchfield National Park. However duty calls and I must work so the changes will have to wait. Tiles 20:30 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Nice work, Tiles! I like what you've done with the map locator. The red dot that indicates Nitmiluk is much clearer than mine for Organ Pipes. I'll change it accordingly. I'm not too fussy about which font to use, as long as it's readable. Take it easy with that duty call, Wikipedia is waiting afterwards ;-) D.D. 20:47 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I will definitely join in with the national parks of Thailand, once I have finished the provinces of Thailand. I would suggest to use a color code like this:
  • green for parks protecting nature (forests)
  • blue for parks protecting seascape
  • brown for parks focusing on geology
  • don't know yet for historical parks
And it might look better to have the color code only in the table cell with the name of the park, and keep the map on white background. However I will be away the 'pedia for three weeks now, I will rejoin discussion after that. andy 21:19 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Good to have you on board and looking forward to your contributions. About the colour code: I've been thinking about something similar (esp. a land/sea division), but I'm afraid it won't really work. Take a look at Garig Gunak Barlu National Park: about 50% of it is land, the other 50% is sea. What colour would you suggest for that? And there are many areas which focus on more than one aspect (e.g. Kakadu National Park is protected for both cultural and natural reasons). I prefer a division along the lines mav proposed. As he said, the IUCN categories are fairly standard and objective. As for using colour in the first cell only, mav took care of that (Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas/General). D.D. 05:38 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Interesting breakdown for the colors but IMO basing the colors on the IUCN classifications is more useful and far less maddening (many parks protect more than one of the types of areas you listed). But I do agree that the fill color should be limited to the heading. This makes the table less of a distraction (esp for the darker colors) and it also is more flexible in that the tables can take larger images without the images hiding the fill color. It is also non-standard around here to place any color but gray behind images (the visual contrast hurts my eyes a bit too). --mav 05:49 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

(1) I'm wondering if we could not broaden the Date of Establishment part of the table. Quite a few Protected Areas have evolved during the years: some have been enlarged (e.g. Triglav national park), some have been renamed (e.g. Uluru National Park has become Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park), some have been joined together (e.g. Garig Gunak Barlu National Park), some have become a different category (e.g. Death Valley National Monument has become Death Valley National Park), and no doubt other changes have taken place. That's why I thought of adding a short History section to the table instead of the Date of Establishment. If no changes occurred, then of course only the Date of Establishment is mentioned in this section. (see the example here)
(2) Should we apply a fixed width, a maximum width or no width limit to the table. If fixed/maximum, how much should that be (280px seems like a workable solution). The text will probably fit well into the table, but care should be taken with the map locators. I feel we should apply a maximum width to them at least. D.D. 20:06 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

1 - There really shouldn't be a history section (meaning prose) in the table - that is what the ==History== section is for in the article itself. But in cases like Death Valley all we have to do is have more than one entry; Simply put in the date that it was established as a National Monument and right after it put in the date is was established as a National Park.
2 - I don't really see the point in specifying table width since the content in the table does this automatically. We could simply have larger table images and they would specify the width. IMO, the current images don't look the greatest in the tables anyway because they don't fill the cell they are in. See sun or roundworm for an table images that fill their cells. --mav

(1) No problems with your solution.
(2) I acknowledge that the current map locators of Australian regions are not optimal. Feel free to improve them :-) On the other hand, I do wonder how you are going to fill the entire cell in case of odd shaped countries (e.g. Chile, which is extremely elongated).
(3) Something else I didn't think was possible: have a look at Walls of Jerusalem National Park. See the IUCN category? it's II/Ib. If the colour code corresponds to a particular category, how are we going to solve that? (and that's not the only Protected Area that belongs to more than 1 category.) D.D. 20:22 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

2) Just as with the Australia maps we do not need to have the entire country in the maps. We will just take the cases where a park itself is much longer than wide when we come to them (we don't need to have the image fill its cell for every entry - but in cases where this would look nice IMO we should have it that way).
3) I'm sure Yosemite National Park will be the same because much of that National Park is in protected wilderness areas. In these cases I think we should use the color that corresponds to the highest level of protection offered in the protected area and let the prose of the article explain the situation in detail. The table, of course, should list both. --mav

(2) In this case you're probably right when you say that we should tackle a problem when it arises. I have no objections.
(3) I don't really agree with you here. What do you mean with "highest level"? Do you mean to say that a category with a higher number is more "important" than one with a lower number? I think there's more to it than that. IMO these numbers don't indicate the importance but the type of protection a certain area is given. I don't think you can say that a category IV area has a "higher level" of protection than a category Ib area. They're just areas protected for different reasons. On the other hand, I have to say that I don't really have another solution than yours -- apart from using the mathematically intermediate colour between the two categories :-) D.D. 19:16 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)


I have used the WikiProject Protected Areas as the model for Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park. I did make a few changes that I would like your comments on.

(1) I used a map of the U.S. not just Colorado because I think people outside the U.S. may have trouble placing it with just a state map (I think this is true for all national parks, not just ones in Colorado). For instance, I still have no idea where Organ Pipes National Park is, even with the map.

(2) I added a line to the table Designation: National Park. I am a little unsure if it is needed since it is in the title, but for long park names (like this one) it may be better to remove the 'National Park' from the title.

(3) In the row IUCN category, I added the name of the category i.e. III (Natural Monument) I hadn't heard of IUCN before running across this wikiproject and I certainly don't expect people to know what a category number stands for. see Natural Bridges National Monument for an example (added Lorax 8 Oct 2003)

Comments and edits welcome.

Lorax 07 Oct 2003

Your comment on the location map is valid. Australia does not have as many states as the US and they are irregular shapes. I have been updating the OZ loc maps with mored detail (see Tunnel Creek National Park) to make them more meaningful. You might like to place your template at here.
The colour code is supposed to indicate the designation but I agree with the added line.
Ditto on the meaning of the IUCN category.
Welcome to the project. Your articles are very good. Tiles 04:34, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Well, I am mucking with stuff again. this time Mesa Verde National Park This time the change is moving the title of the table below the locator image and removing the designation from that table cell. I did this because the way it was, in about 1 vertical inch at the top of the page, you had the park name 3 times, which seemed like too many. I removed the designation so it wouldn't wrap. I am not particularly tied to this implementation, I just want to see how the different options look on real pages, so comments/edits are appreciated. Lorax 20:49, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I prefer the name at the top of the table but agree that there is no need to add the designation. BTW I moved your image in Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park. It was overlapping the table in my browser. Tiles 02:30, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I am done with my experimentation and have updated all the parks I did to be consistent, the name is back on the top. I have also added visitation figures where available.


{{SampleWikiProject}}


I nominated Yellowstone National Park as a representative article. It covers all the information that a general reader might wish to know about a specific protected area. Tiles 07:35, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)


I'm curious why this project is listed under Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology rather than Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography? I never noticed the project until now for that reason. -- Walt Pohl 19:03, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Good point. I have switched our allegiance from Biology to Geography Tiles 00:03, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Did we ever accept the colors in the table by IUCN level? I made the box for Isle Royale National Park by copying the Yellowstone one but Isle Royale is a designated wilderness. Does that make it a higher IUCN level and in need of a color change? Rmhermen 16:15, Mar 25, 2004 (UTC)

The answer to both questions is yes. The colour codes are here Tiles 23:18, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Another question is: Are IUCN level assignments made by IUCN or by each country? (As far as I could see they only approve World Heritage sites which our color scheme doesn't cover.) If by each country is there a reason to believe that wilderness status granted by one country has a similar meaning to that status granted by another country? It would be nice if it did if we are going to be putting them in the same color. I don't know anything about this IUCN or how it works. The IUCN article did not help - it doesn't even mention these levels. Rmhermen 03:38, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)
I think IUCN define the attributes of the categories and countries decide for themselves the category of specific areas, except for World Heritage sites.Tiles 09:22, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
A new problem. I listed Isle Royale as wilderness as 99.6% of the park is designated wilderness and Yosemite where 95% of the park is designated. But I left Saguaro National Park as national park - 78% is designated wilderness. (Carlsbad Caverns is at 71% wilderness) Where should the cut-off be? Rmhermen 14:20, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
If you look on the meta page under the Useful Links section, there is a link to the UN List of Protected Areas, Pick the country (United States in this case) and you will get a long, hard to read list of all the protected areas in the US and the designation, From that, you can see they have designated Isle Royale as type II, Yosemite as type II, and Saguaro as type III. I think we should stick to using their designations. Lorax 00:02, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
Actually you will find that Yosemite, Isle Royale, Mount Rainier are listed both as level II and level Ia. They must have missed Saguaro as it was only made a national park and wilderness a couple years before the list was made. And strangely that list has a number of "state parks" listed as level II, which we call a "national park" designation. Rmhermen 06:20, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)