Nature parks in Germany (German: Naturparks) have been established under section 22, paragraph 4 of that country's Federal Nature Conservation Act (BNatSchG). As of 2020 there were 103 nature parks, comprising about 27 percent of the total land area of Germany and are brought together under the Association of German Nature Parks. In total there are 23,159 Protected Areas in Germany. Parks that overlap into neighbouring countries are led by Europarc. The surface area of nature parks in Germany increased by 42% between 1998 and the end of 2019 (this corresponds to around 3.0 million hectares).