bcdc_to_sf.R

bcdc_to_sf <- function(layer, crs = 3005) {
  if (!requireNamespace("httr") || !requireNamespace("sf")) {
    stop("You must have the sf and httr packages installed.")
  }

  base_url <- sprintf("https://openmaps.gov.bc.ca/geo/pub/%s/ows", layer)
  
  srs <- paste0("epsg:", crs)
  response <- httr::GET(base_url,
                        query = list(service = "WFS", 
                                     version = "2.0.0", 
                                     request = "GetFeature", 
                                     typeName = layer, 
                                     outputFormat = "json", 
                                     SRSNAME = srs))
  httr::stop_for_status(response)
  
  sf::read_sf(httr::content(response, as = "text"))
  
}


# Example usage
herds <- bcdc_to_sf("WHSE_WILDLIFE_INVENTORY.GCPB_CARIBOU_POPULATION_SP")

plot(herds[, "HERD_NAME"])