PAN-NZ Data Improvement
PAN-NZ Data Improvement
The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research (MWLR) are jointly developing the Protected Areas Network of New Zealand (PAN-NZ), a national spatial dataset that provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of protected areas across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Although the PAN-NZ database has existed for over two decades, it has not been publicly released since 2007. Past compilations were developed to support specific projects and were assembled on an ad hoc basis, which limited their accessibility, consistency, and long-term value. Most notably, previous versions lacked full coverage, particularly for protections held by local authorities.
This initiative seeks to address the key issues that have affected previous releases of PAN-NZ, primarily the significant inefficiencies in combining the many source datasets required to create a national-level view, and the persistent data gaps resulting from missing information and limitations on data sharing.
This initiative aims to improve PAN-NZ to ensure regular updates, public availability, and an authoritative dataset by:
The overarching goal is to enable an up-to-date national view of protections to inform planning, decision-making, research, and progress tracking toward national and international commitments.
This site is hosted using GitHub Pages to support transparency, collaboration, and rapid publishing. As the PAN-NZ guidelines and dataset catalogues are still in draft form, GitHub provides a collaborative environment where contributors can propose changes, raise issues, and suggest improvements via GitHub issues and pull requests. GitHub also acts as a central landing page for PAN-NZ, where updates, draft guidance, and related materials can be easily published and shared. While this is not a full-featured data catalogue, it provides a lightweight and scalable way to share information, coordinate feedback and track progress.
For details on how to contribute or provide feedback, please see the Contribute / Contact page.
As part of this initiative, we have developed draft guidelines that describe the key information and practices needed to support the inclusion of protected area datasets in PAN-NZ.
These guidelines are intended to reduce duplication of effort for both protected area data providers and users, while also streamlining the integration of protected area data into national information systems. They focus on making datasets easy to access, interpret, and incorporate into a national view. We are not requiring rigid schema adoption. Instead, we prioritise clear licensing, discoverability, and the presence of key attributes that describe the protection.
The guidelines outline:
The full draft guidelines are available here: guidelines
By aligning with these guidelines, dataset holders can ensure their information contributes meaningfully to a national understanding of protected areas.
The PAN-NZ data catalogues aim to identify and document all known protected area datasets managed by central and local government, as well as by other organisations such as community groups and NGOs.
These catalogues are not limited to datasets already included in the national layer. They also record datasets that are currently incomplete or not yet eligible for inclusion. By cataloguing these sources, PAN-NZ supports coordination and helps data holders understand what is already available and where improvements may be needed.
The catalogues serve several purposes:
We encourage all data holders to check the catalogue entries relevant to their organisation. If your dataset is not yet included, or if updates are needed, please contact the PAN-NZ team through the Contribute / Contact page.
You can view the catalogues via the data catalogues page.
PAN-NZ aims to assign each protected area an IUCN protected area category, where the source information allows. The IUCN framework is a widely recognised international standard that describes the level and purpose of protection. Assigning IUCN categories helps users compare protections across regions and supports applications such as conservation planning, reporting, and biodiversity assessments.
Where datasets include the legislative act and corresponding section under which an area is legally protected, PAN-NZ will use this information to determine the most appropriate IUCN category. If this information is missing or unclear, the protection will still be included in the national dataset but marked as unranked in the protection category field.
Including a protection rank allows users to filter the dataset based on the strength of protection. For example, a user may choose to focus only on areas that offer the highest level of legal protection to biodiversity, while others may wish to see all areas regardless of rank.
Alongside the main PAN-NZ workstreams, a parallel effort is underway to map New Zealand’s legislation to IUCN categories in a consistent and transparent way. This work will help ensure that protections are classified accurately and fairly. Further details about this mapping will be published as the project progresses.
