National Parks (Nationale Parken) — RVO / Netherlands
What This Dataset Is
Boundaries of all 21 National Parks in the Netherlands — large contiguous natural areas
designated for their ecological, landscape, and recreational value. Parks range from coastal
dunes (Zuid-Kennemerland, Duinen van Texel) to forests (De Hoge Veluwe, Veluwezoom),
wetlands (De Biesbosch, Weerribben-Wieden), heathlands (Dwingelderveld), and a tidal
estuary (Oosterschelde, the largest at ~38,000 ha).
This is a complete enumeration — all 21 parks, not a sample. The oldest park (Veluwezoom)
dates to 1930; the newest (Van Gogh) was designated in October 2024.
Since the 2023 reform, provinces manage the parks with support from the Nationale Parken
Bureau, giving parks a stronger governance framework.
The data is a GeoParquet file in EPSG:28992 (Amersfoort / RD New), the Dutch national
coordinate system. Use DuckDB with the spatial extension.
The file is tiny (~800 KB, 21 features) — you can load it entirely into memory.
Schema — Field Meanings
Field
Type
Meaning
geometry
WKB MultiPolygon
Park boundary in EPSG:28992 (Amersfoort / RD New). Units are metres.
naam
string
Park name (Dutch). The key human-readable identifier.
nr
int32
Sequential park number in chronological designation order (1–22, with 12 skipped).
hectares
float64
Area in hectares from the official registration. May differ from computed geometry area due to complex boundaries including water.
datum
string
Date of designation (ISO 8601, e.g. 1930-01-01).
bron
string
Source organization that supplied the boundary (e.g. Natuurmonumenten, Prov. Friesland).
fiat_secr
string
Whether the Secretary of State approved the designation (Ja, Nee, or blank).
Important Columns
The columns you'll actually use:
naam — park name
hectares — park area
datum — designation date
geometry — park boundary polygon
Geometry Notes
CRS is EPSG:28992 (Amersfoort / RD New) — the Dutch national coordinate system. Units are metres. To get WGS84 coordinates for web maps, reproject to EPSG:4326.
All geometries are MultiPolygon (some parks have disjoint parts).
Bounding box (RD): X 36,781–251,585, Y 350,383–615,251.
For area calculations, use the hectares attribute rather than computing from geometry — it accounts for boundary conventions around water bodies.
The 21 Parks
Nr
Name
Hectares
Designated
1
Veluwezoom
5,015
1930
2
De Hoge Veluwe
5,105
1935
3
Schiermonnikoog
6,838
1989
4
Dwingelderveld
3,766
1991
5
De Groote Peel
1,314
1993
6
De Biesbosch
8,980
1994
7
De Meinweg
2,064
1995
8
Zuid-Kennemerland
3,568
1995
9
De Maasduinen
4,171
1996
10
Drents-Friese Wold
Note: Nr 12 does not exist in the dataset (skipped in the numbering).
Useful Query Patterns
List all parks sorted by size
Find parks designated after 2000
Total protected area
Reproject to WGS84 and get centroids
Load into GeoPandas
Related Datasets
Natura 2000 (also in this catalog): EU-level protected nature areas. Many National Parks
overlap with Natura 2000 sites, but they are separate legal designations.
Natuurnetwerk Nederland (NNN): The national ecological network, includes all National
Parks but is much larger, also covering ecological corridors.
Caveats
The hectares attribute may differ from area computed from geometry because park boundaries
can include water bodies with complex digitization.
Different boundary sources (bron) used different digitization precision levels.
One park (Duinen van Texel) has a blank fiat_secr value.
The system is evolving — the newest park (Van Gogh, 2024) shows new parks can still be added.
Visualization Styles
One Mapbox GL v8 style is available for interactive map visualization via the PMTiles file.
Style files are Mapbox GL v8 JSON with relative PMTiles source paths. They can be
used with MapLibre GL JS, OpenLayers (via ol-mapbox-style), or any Mapbox GL v8-compatible renderer.
styles/default.json — Deep green fill with darker borders and park name labels. Shows the 21 Dutch National Parks with clear boundaries.
Style files are at: https://data.source.coop/cholmes/portolan-nl/rvo/nationale_parken/styles/
Also Available As
PMTiles (vector tiles):nationale_parken.pmtiles — for web map visualization.
OGC API Features: Live access via https://api.pdok.nl/rvo/nationale-parken/ogc/v1/.
Hand-maintained agent guide (ported from this collection's llms.txt in August 2026). Update it alongside collection.json.