Category:IUCN protected area omissions

IUCN protected area omissions is a category of places eligible to be listed by the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) as IUCN protected areas, but which are omitted from their list. To be included in this category, a place must not appear in WCPA's World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) but appear to be a natural area preserving biodiversity which is protected by legal or other means by a government.

Background: As of April 2008, some sites that appear in Category:IUCN Category V and related Wikipedia categories appear to be valid protected areas, in that they are natural areas and to be protected, but they are not listed in the WDPA.

This category provides support to WikiProject Protected Areas which relies upon the WDPA as a basic source on which sites to categorize as protected areas. When an apparent error about the nature of a protected natural area is verified, it seems appropriate to add or keep the site in the relevant IUCN Category, Category:IUCN Category V or similar Wikipedia category. This omissions category is provided to mark such situations, to support corrections in WPDA, external to Wikipedia, and to support data quality in Wikipedia (by helping to prevent erroneous reclassifications back and forth from protected area categories).

WikiProject Protected Areas seeks to work with WCPA to correct the WDPA listings, facilitated by use of this category. Ideally, there should be no members of this category, but currently it is useful to have this category in order to facility Wikipedia data quality improvement. For discussion or to join in this endeavor, please comment in Talk area of WP:PAREAS. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected areas/ProtectedAreasUS which may provide additional comments on the nature of errors for U.S. sites.

See also Category:IUCN protected area errors which covers the reverse situation, for when WDPA erroneously lists a site that is not a natural area or is not protected.