The second map: where Europe's drone maps leave out the parks

Article 15 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 lets Member States define UAS geographical zones for safety, security, privacy or environmental reasons. Our first survey asked whether those zones can be downloaded. This one asks what is in them: do national parks, nature reserves, bird protection areas and Natura 2000 sites appear on the map a pilot checks before flying? In the ED-269 format, those zones carry the reason NATURE.

Where a State does not draw them, the restriction does not go away. It stays in the nature-conservation act or in the park's own rules, and a pilot who looks only at the aviation authority's map has no way of seeing it. The UK Civil Aviation Authority says so plainly: "Byelaws are unlikely to be shown on apps or drone websites."

The count

Thirty-eight countries, re-verified on 23 September 2026 and updated on the 25th. Each row has its link and its sentence in the source register.

• In the downloadable file (9): Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland.
• On the map only (4): Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain.
• Partly (4): Austria (2 zones), Lithuania (1 zone), Slovenia (1 zone, the whole of Triglav National Park) and Italy (313 zones out of 4,647).
• Announced (1): France. Its official map says that biotope and habitat protection zones "seront prochainement intégrées", will soon be integrated.
• Not at all (20): Albania, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, the United Kingdom.

Seventeen countries out of thirty-eight show the pilot, in some form, that a protected area lies below. Nine put it in a file that software can read. In Estonia those zones only inform: they carry no restriction and apply from April to November.

What the files contain

Where a file can be downloaded, we counted the nature zones in it.

Two countries deserve a line of their own. Norway shows that it can be done. Its drone map, run by the Civil Aviation Authority, has shown protected areas at least since 20 August 2026, and its September files hold 3,470 nature zones, from 2,689 nature reserves to 48 national parks, all with the Norwegian Environment Agency as the authority. Italy shows the gap. Its 313 zones all require an authorisation, but the country has 1,048 nationally designated areas in the European Environment Agency's CDDA database and 2,649 Natura 2000 sites, and most of them are not in the file. A pilot who flies by d-flight does not see them.

In Italy the rule depends on who reads it, and protected areas are everywhere. The Natura 2000 network alone covers 19.38% of Italy's land, according to the Ministry of the Environment in January 2026, and more than a third of Abruzzo: the d-flight file shows 313 zones. The 1991 framework law on protected areas bans "il sorvolo di velivoli non autorizzato", unauthorised overflight, in parks, and punishes it with up to six months' arrest or a fine. ENAC's website says instead, at least since 2024, that for drones only the parks whose ban ENAC has approved and published on the d-flight platform are closed to overflight, and that bans decided by other bodies "sono pertanto invalidi", are therefore invalid. ENAC's draft regulation on geographical zones, put out for consultation in June 2026 and not yet adopted, has park authorities request those zones, but does not say what applies where no zone exists.

Meanwhile, enforcement arrives through videos posted online, and pilots learn about the ban afterwards. Between 2014 and 2024, parks and the Carabinieri forestry police fined or reported pilots traced through their footage on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, from Gran Paradiso to the salt pans of Trapani, with verified fines from €100 to €1,152. In 2021, three young pilots were fined after forestry officers found their video of the Conero park on social media. In 2024, the Maritime Alps protected areas fined two pilots traced "attraverso i video pubblicati sui canali social Instagram e Youtube", through their videos on Instagram and YouTube, and asked them to take the footage down. In the Monti Sibillini, a fine arrived in 2024 for a video published on YouTube in 2019 and reposted on Instagram at the end of 2023. Its authors contest it: they write that part of the footage was shot with GoPro accessories, and that by the park's own records it entered the aeronautical list only on 1 December 2022. On an Italian forum, one member writes of being "quasi tentato di mettere in privato o cancellare tutti i video", almost tempted to make all the videos private or delete them. The Gran Paradiso rules tell visitors plainly that hobby drone filming is not allowed, "ivi compresa la pubblicazione su pagine social e youtube", including posting on social media and YouTube.

Italy is not alone. In Spain, a pilot does not have to be caught in the act: in December 2025 the Guardia Civil filed six administrative complaints against a content creator after spotting, on social media, videos from the Sierra de Gredos Regional Park that included drone flights without authorisation, and back in 2016 it had reported a pilot over drone videos of Teide National Park published online. In France, drones are banned from the core zones of national parks, and Vanoise states that any use there carries a €135 fixed fine; the French cases we found, though, are on-the-spot checks, not fines after a video.

If you travel with a drone. In Italy, d-flight does not show every park, and the rules of many parks require the managing body's permission before flying over parks, reserves and protected coastline, including for a video meant for social media. Those rules apply to tourists as much as to professionals, and fines have arrived months later, from videos posted online. Many parks in other countries do the same, such as Plitvice in Croatia or Triglav in Slovenia.

How complete the official data is

Dronetrake takes the managing bodies from the Natura 2000 database of the European Environment Agency. That database names a managing body for 23,597 sites, but gives an email address for only 16,003 of them. It lists 3,992 different links to management plans. When we checked them all again on 13 September 2026, 2,001 opened, 863 refused an automated visit, 646 did not respond, 476 no longer existed or opened an error page and 6 returned a server error. Some error pages pretend to be normal ones: a single link given for 269 sites in Saxony opens a page that says "Fehler 404". In the end, a working plan link exists for 9,218 of the 23,597 sites.

What Dronetrake does with it

Dronetrake's planning map does not wait for the national maps on this. It loads the 27,173 Natura 2000 sites of the European Union and 142,360 nationally designated areas in 38 countries, from the European Environment Agency's CDDA (CC BY 4.0), with the managing body for 23,597 sites. It shows the link to the management plan only when the page really opens, and when the managing body has an email it prepares the authorisation request in the language of the country. The layer shows where you are and who decides. The rules are written by the managing body.

Three examples on satellite imagery, taken on 13 September 2026.

Plantagenetgrund, Germany: the data is complete. Managing bodies, email and plan link are there, and the request can be prepared.

Massif des Albères, France: the plan link in the official database opens a "page not found", so Dronetrake does not show it. The email is there, and the request can still be prepared.

Duinen en Lage Land Texel, the Netherlands: the plan link opens, but the official database gives no email for the managing body, so the request cannot be prepared from the map.

A union of European jungles

The first survey found a common format that each State publishes as it likes. This one finds the same with parks and reserves. The regulation is European, the protected areas are European, the Natura 2000 network is European, and yet what a pilot sees before take-off depends on the country, and often on nothing at all. Drone zones and protected areas now belong to the same union of European jungles. Europe's credibility on drones gives way on more than one front at once, and a continent that does not publish its own rules in a form people can use ends up living by rules written by others, instead of setting its own.

Country by country

What could not be fully verified

France: the SIA's ED-269 file sits behind an account. Malta: the law, and the environment authority's role as read on its own website, which refuses automated reading. Romania: the regulations of the individual parks, published in a gazette that must be paid for. Greece: the park regulations other than Samaria and the Nestos. Portugal: the text in force of the nature conservation law, amended in 2015.

Method

Two routes, both dated. Where a downloadable file exists, we counted the nature zones in the file itself, on 10 September 2026 and again on 13 September 2026 wherever the file could be downloaded without an account. For the other countries we read the authority's page or map and the national law that restricts drones over protected areas. Where a source would not open, or did not prove the point, the answer is "not verified", never inferred.

On 23 September 2026 we read every country again, in its own language and in the browser where pages blocked automated reading. Each row now has the link and the sentence that decides it in the source register.

The re-check of 13 September changed six results. Norway moved into the file group. The Netherlands, Lithuania and Moldova moved to not verified. France moved from partly to announced, and Serbia, whose new decree could not be found on an official page, to not at all.

Correction, 23 September 2026

On 23 September we read the thirty-two countries again and added six more, with the same method as our survey of UAS zones: each country's file, map, law and authority, with the link and the sentence that decides. Six results change, and the count of countries that show protected areas rises from ten to fifteen.

• Iceland has a file, behind the download button of its official map, with 37 protected-area zones and a flight ban. We wrote that it had nothing.
• Austria has 2 nature zones in its file, the bird reserves of Lake Neusiedl and the Rhine. We wrote "not at all".
• Lithuania has a prohibited zone over the Žuvintas reserve, in the file and on the map. It was "not verified".
• The Netherlands, Georgia and Moldova were "not verified": the Dutch file can be read and has no nature zones, and Georgia and Moldova have neither official files nor official maps.
• Serbia has a new decree, 69/2026, published by the authority: from 29 October it bans drones over first-category protected areas. We wrote that it could not be found on an official page.
• New in the count: Latvia, with 22 nature zones in its file; Slovenia, with one zone covering the whole of Triglav; and Slovakia, Liechtenstein, Greece and Malta.
• Sources updated, result unchanged: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, Croatia, where we have now read the official map, and the file totals of Czechia, Germany, Estonia, Finland and Luxembourg. In Poland the rule applies to all 23 national parks, not only Kampinos.

The protected-area data that Dronetrake shows comes from the European Environment Agency, under the CC BY 4.0 licence: the Natura 2000 network (end of 2024 release) and the nationally designated areas (July 2026). For the latter, the Agency warns that the areas of Estonia and Ireland are wholly or partly missing, because it does not have permission to distribute them.

Update, 25 September 2026

We have closed almost all the checks that were still open. Two results change, and the count rises from fifteen to seventeen countries that show protected areas.

• The Netherlands move to "on the map only". The ministry's file has no nature zones, but the government's page points to two maps, and one of them, Aeret, has a layer with the Natura 2000 sites. We wrote "not at all".
• Malta moves to "on the map only". The official map loads 188 zones without a login, and 14 are nature reserves, with the permit of the environment authority. It was "not verified".
• Italy stays "partly". The d-flight file of 25 September has 313 nature zones out of 4,647.
• Greece stays "not at all" on the map, but the law is now verified: flying over environmental protection areas needs a special authorisation, and the Samaria and Nestos parks ban drones except with a permit.
• Legal bases added, result unchanged: Romania, Portugal, Cyprus, Luxembourg, and in France the Environmental Code, read from the official database because Légifrance refuses automated reading.