Template talk:Infobox protected area

Park Codes

The National Park Service in the US assigns every national park/monument/etc a four-letter "Park Code." It may be useful to include this somewhere in the infobox. As of now, the easiest place to find these is an Excel file provided by the NPS. Being on Wikipedia provides additional visibility to these codes, and would selfishly assist my partner in working with the NPS API.

I'm not sure how/if other countries do this, so the text should likely be generalized, maybe we call it an identifier. Jaidenstar (talk) 16:44, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Are these codes actually useful for general readers? It sounds like they’re a bit of a niche database reference if they’re so hard to find otherwise. Not outright, but I am leaning opposed to including them. Worth considering WP:NOTDATABASE. — HTGS (talk) 03:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Good point, thanks for the feedback. I personally believe it is helpful to have these codes next to the rest of the information but you are likely right about policy here. Jaidenstar (talk) 17:00, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 24 February 2024

I would like a logo section added as UK national Parks and landscapes have logos that would be useful to add. Mark999 (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done SWinxy (talk) 03:03, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Map problem

I'm hoping someone can fix the errors shown in the infoboxes at Booderee National Park and Botanic Gardens and South West Woodland Nature Reserve. Thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 06:23, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Photo vs Image

Is there a reason that this template uses |photo= when literally every other infobox I've ever used uses |image=? Is there any objection to changing this? (would deprecate the old, not just delete it). Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:38, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Following up on this I am going to start the process of removing uses of |photo= in favor of the much more widely used |image=. Any issues with this or objections to it, please let me know. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 00:31, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Random maps

Why do the 'With photograph only' and 'With no photograph or map' examples have maps that don't seem to add anything to the information being imparted? YorkshireExpat (talk) 10:14, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

You mean in the documentation?

Mapframes were added to the template by Joy in November, 2024. In the current infobox, the mapframe is on by default if no other map is given. Per WP:Mapframe maps in infoboxes, we can discuss whether the mapframes should be included. What do editors think? — hike395 (talk) 12:37, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

The thumbnail in the first example, Yosemite, wasn't great because all the labels were cut off and it wasn't immediately obvious where this was. I zoomed it out by one level now (7->6), and it shows major cities, coastline and a border. Though it should be noted that even in the original form it was actually adding something to the information - the button to zoom in and out, pan, see links to other articles, etc. But it does make sense to improve the thumbnail if we can, too.

The default zoom for that thumbnail is set either the various dimensions parameters, in that case would have been based on area_acre = 761266. In that example, there's also the scale = 300000 parameter, but I'm not sure offhand what it does, it's not actually documented.

Maybe in case of protected areas we should assume they're a bit further away from other landmarks that would provide useful labels, and get that zoomed out by default a bit more?

In the second example, Harz, the zoom is likewise set after area_ha = 8900, and we have a visible label of Braunlage, but that's a relatively small place. If we zoom out by 1 (10->9), there's many more labels, but also relatively small places. If we zoom out by 1 more (8), we almost get a full label for Göttingen, which is 20x the size of Braunlage. If we zoom by 1 more (7), we get a full label for Hanover, which is 90x the size of Braunlage.

This happens in these examples - it may well vary for other protected areas in other parts of the globe. --Joy (talk) 13:15, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Oh, good point. It could be that YorkshireExpat is objecting to the content of the maps, not the existence of the maps. — hike395 (talk) 14:09, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

I can experiment to see if we can zoom out if an area is provided. — hike395 (talk) 14:09, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

For example, the one in The Broads has no context so I tried to remove it, but turns out it's just a part of the template. It really adds nothing in that article and is probably just confusing to most readers. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:51, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Ah, the problem there was this part:

area = 303 square kilometres (117 sq mi)

When this conversion of dimensions is entered manually, the infobox code doesn't understand it for its own purposes. I changed it to:

area_km2 = 303

This is shorter to type, doesn't require doing the conversion by hand, and has the helpful side effect of allowing the map code to change the default map zoom accordingly.

And now we can see that the map of the intricate shape of the area showed up. If you want to tune it further, the mapframe-zoom parameter is available. --Joy (talk) 23:05, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

@Joy Awesome, thanks! YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:41, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

scale parameter

Why doesn't the example with |scale= not trigger {{Check for unknown parameters}} here? --Joy (talk) 13:27, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

You mean here? It's because |scale= is not actually used in the template call, only in the display. It's a bug in the documentation. — hike395 (talk) 13:58, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Oh, nice, phew, I figured I was missing something. --Joy (talk) 17:19, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

BTW followed up on this at Template talk:Syntaxhighlight#potential use in template documentation. --Joy (talk) 23:10, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Category 1a

I have created Category:IUCN Category Ia as for some reason it did not exist before. Could someone edit the infobox so that it automatically categorises PAs that have 1a listed in this infobox in the category? I believe this already happens with other categories. Arcahaeoindris (talk) 06:40, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

 Done This needed to be done at Template:IUCN banner but has been done! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 16:14, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Pushpin map cleanup

As part of a larger refactor of Module:Location map, I will be refactoring the way that this Infobox calls the location map code. The only noticeable change for most will be that the parameter names related to the pushpin maps will now all start with |pushpin_...=. This is part of a larger effort to make things consistent across Infoboxes. When this is done, ALL infoboxes using pushpin maps will use the same parameters. For more information about this, please see this post. As part of this cleanup, I am also going to resolving any conflicting parameters that I can find and cleaning up parameter names that fail to conform to MOS:INFOBOXNAME. Note that this follows a long list of similar clean ups that I have done on countless other Infoboxes. The parameters I plan to replace are the following:

Deprecate	Replace with
|map=	|pushpin_map=
|relief=	|pushpin_relief=
|label=	|pushpin_label=
|label_position=	|pushpin_label_position=
|mark=	|pushpin_mark=
|marksize=	|pushpin_mark_size=
|mapsize=	|map_size=
|map_width=	|map_size=
|url=	|website=

Please chime in below with any questions, comments or concerns about this cleanup. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 02:05, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Proposal to remove parameters

I am proposing the removal of |nearest_town= and |nearest_city= for multiple reasons:

1. They are conflicting parameters for no reason
2. There is no clear distinction between the two (what is a town vs a city in this context?).
3. This information is not necessary per MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. We already have |location= as well as 3 separate options for displaying maps and the coordinates for the location. We do not ALSO need to specify what the nearest town/city is.
4. For large protected areas, these values are ambiguous... Nearest to what? The GPS coords of the center of the protected area?

Courtesy pings: Frietjes, MSGJ, Hike395, Joy, Phuzion, Jonesey95 -- Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:34, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

The town parameter was added in 2012 after minimal discussion, and after many editors suggested a merged or relabeled town/city parameter on this talk page and at the TFD linked in the next sentence. I think it is not useful, but people in discussions like this TFD seem pretty attached to it. A merged parameter as proposed in multiple discussions seems reasonable, but it might just be opening a can of worms. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:08, 5 July 2026 (UTC)