About UK Biota
UK Biota is a free guide to wildlife in the UK. We started with the UK's list of species names, and we point to the organisations that hold the rest.
What the site holds today
Today the site holds the UK species list, with names in English, Welsh and Gaelic. Each species' status, its legal protection and where it has been seen are kept by other organisations, and our pages link to them. We'd like to bring more of it together here over time.
Who uses it
The site is written for anyone with a question about local wildlife and what to do about it, and for the recorders and society members who already know the national picture but not the fastest way to it.
- Walkers, gardeners, anglers and divers checking what they have seen
- Landowners, farmers and parish councils working out what protections or targets apply to a piece of land
- Teachers and students building a national picture from one place
- Journalists and recorders who want to check a figure against its source
Free to use
UK Biota is a free public resource, built and funded by its maker.
What the site runs on
UK Biota joins data already published by the organisations that record and protect species and habitats across the UK into a single set of species, habitat, issue and place pages.
The organisations behind the data
- The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Atlas and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which hold species occurrence records submitted by recorders and recording schemes across the UK and beyond.
- The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), which sets the conservation designations used on species pages.
- Natural England, NatureScot, Natural Resources Wales and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), the statutory bodies responsible for nature conservation in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- The Environment Agency, which publishes environmental monitoring data such as water quality and flood information.
- Recording schemes, run by naturalists and societies, who identify and log the sightings that national trends are built on.
How to report an error
If something here doesn't match its source, please tell us. The source may have changed since we last read it.
What to include
- The page the figure or record appears on
- The figure, status or record in question
- What the source shows instead, if known
That detail lets the discrepancy be checked against the source directly. Reports can also be sent to ukbiota.