Looking up a UK species

A UK species usually has more than one name attached to it, a common name that varies by region and a Latin binomial that does not, and the two can point to different records depending on where you look. The Natural History Museum's UK Species Inventory holds the standard reference names used across the UK, so a search there settles which name is which before you go looking for anything else: the UK Species Inventory.

Conservation status and legal protection are not the same thing

Conservation status describes how a species is faring, on measures such as the Red List category. Legal protection describes what the law says you may or may not do to it, and the two can point in different directions: a species can be legally protected without being rare, and a species can be declining without any legal protection attaching to it at all. JNCC's conservation designations for UK taxa records the designations that apply to each species, listing them against the categories the statutory bodies use: JNCC's conservation designations for UK taxa. If the table lists nothing against a species, it has no designation.

Finding what has actually been recorded

A name and a designation tell you about the species in general. A record tells you where and when someone has actually seen it. The NBN Atlas species search, run by the National Biodiversity Network, opens a species' own page of records drawn from recording schemes and societies across the UK: the NBN Atlas species search. A record can be missing from a search for reasons that have nothing to do with the species itself: a sighting that was never submitted, a submission still waiting to be verified, or simply a place that recorders visit less often than others. A blank result means no record has reached the Atlas.

Whether the law protects it

Legal protection in the UK runs through specific schedules, and what is prohibited, and what would need a licence, differs by schedule. The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and its schedules, published in full on legislation.gov.uk, set out which species are covered and what protection each one carries: the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 on legislation.gov.uk. Reading the schedule for a particular species is the way to find out what applies to it.