National parks and nature reserves

Protected areas are boundaries tagged boundary=national_park or boundary=protected_area. protect_class follows the IUCN categories: 1a and 1b are strict reserves and wilderness, 2 is a national park.

The query

[out:json][timeout:60];
area["ISO3166-1"="CH"][admin_level=2]->.ch;
rel["boundary"~"^(national_park|protected_area)$"]["protect_class"~"^(1a|1b|2)$"](area.ch);
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. Most protected areas are relations, because their boundaries are long and shared.
2. out geom; returns the boundary ways, joined into areas on the map below.

Variations

• All nature reserves: ["leisure"="nature_reserve"].

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.