How is UK biodiversity doing?

England's target for species abundance is tracked through Defra's indicators of species abundance in England, which draw together counts of birds, butterflies, plants and other groups into a single statutory measure of how wildlife populations are changing over time. The indicators do not collect data themselves; they are built from the long-running counts that recorders and volunteers have kept going for decades.

BirdTrends

BirdTrends, published by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), reports how each UK bird species is doing, drawing on population and breeding data gathered species by species across the country.

The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme

The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) is run by Butterfly Conservation together with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the BTO and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). It publishes butterfly trends built from transect counts, where recorders walk a fixed route and count the butterflies seen along it, repeated at the same sites over many years.

Between them, these schemes show how the counts behind a national indicator are actually gathered, and where to read the results for a particular species group directly from the body that holds them.

A designated site such as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), a National Nature Reserve (NNR) or a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) is given a condition assessment: a judgement by the relevant statutory body on whether the habitats and species the site was designated for are in the state they should be. That judgement is what tells you whether a site is holding its ground, recovering or slipping, and it is published.

Where to read it

Each country's statutory nature conservation body keeps its own record of these assessments.

• England: Natural England's Designated Sites View lists England's designated sites along with their condition assessments.
• Scotland: NatureScot's SiteLink is the map and register of protected areas in Scotland.
• Wales: DataMapWales, the Welsh Government's map portal, shows protected sites in Wales.

Searching a site by name or postcode in the relevant tool brings up its designation, its boundary and the condition recorded against it, direct from the body responsible for that judgement.

To see which designated sites lie near a particular place, the protected sites and places pages set out what each designation means before pointing to these registers.

Two publications between them give the fullest published picture of how UK wildlife is faring, and each is produced by a different kind of body for a different purpose.

The State of Nature report

The State of Nature report is produced by a partnership of conservation and research organisations and is the periodic assessment of UK wildlife, drawing together data on species and habitats from across the country. It is the report most people mean when they ask how nature in the UK is doing overall. Read the latest edition on its own site.

The UK Biodiversity Indicators

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) publishes the UK Biodiversity Indicators, a UK-wide set of indicators tracking things such as species populations, habitat extent and protected site condition over time. Where the State of Nature report gives a narrative assessment, this indicator set is the underlying series that assessment and government reporting both draw on. JNCC updates the indicators on its own schedule, so the page linked above carries whatever is current when you visit it.

Between them these two sources cover the assessment and the indicator data behind it. For the species and habitats they track, see the UK species and UK habitats pages, and for what the legal status categories mean, see UK wildlife law and conservation status.