EU Special Protection Areas Bird Data with Species Counts and Coordinates

Joint Nature Conservation Committee data details qualifying bird species on every UK Special Protection Area (SPA), as required under the EC Birds Directive from 1979. The dataset includes fields for species, population counts, season, site coordinates, and conservation status, drawn from section 3.1 of the EU Standard Data Form. It is updated whenever new or amended information is submitted to the EU Commission.

Use Cases

• Modeling bird population trends based on minimum and maximum population count fields.
• Mapping protected area networks for conservation planning based on site coordinates.
• Analyzing seasonal habitat use patterns based on the season field for migratory species.
• Assessing species conservation status and site importance based on the SPECIES_CONSERVATION and IMPORTANCE fields.

Strengths

• Includes explicit geographic coordinates (X_coord, Y_coord) for site mapping.
• Contains detailed species-level data including population counts, season, and conservation status.
• Updated with each new submission to the EU Commission, suggesting ongoing maintenance.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to uk_data, focusing on UK SPAs.

Provenance

Source

Joint Nature Conservation Committee

Collection Method

Compiled from Standard Data Forms submitted to the EU Commission.

Time Range

Data submissions from December 2015 onwards.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-14 09:45:37.691741; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Special Protection Areas (SPAs) in the UK.