Abstract
Every six years, statutory reports on the condition of nationally important habitats and species are produced under the Habitats Regulations (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) and the Conservation of Offshore Marine Habitats and Species Regulations (UK Offshore). Reports covering the 2019 to 2024 reporting period were published in January 2026. Further detail on the reporting can be found on the JNCC website.
Country and Offshore Habitats Regulations reports include information on the current trends and population of naturally occurring bird species. For the 2019–2024 reporting period, this information was collected at the UK level by JNCC and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). This UK-level information was used to inform country reports, supplemented by country-specific information on pressures, conservation measures, and species action plans, strategies and working groups.
Included here is the Habitats Regulations UK wild bird supporting information, including underpinning data on UK bird status and trends and seabird breeding distribution maps.
Habitats Regulations UK birds reporting data
The “Habitat Regulations Report: UK wild birds data for reporting period 2019–2024” spreadsheet provides the reporting information collated by JNCC and BTO. It includes five worksheets:
Explanatory information: summarises the reporting context, worksheet contents, and provides references to relevant Birds of Conservation Concern (BoCC) and IUCN GB Red List assessments.
Report: contains detailed species-level data on: Population size and trend (short- and long-term), Breeding distribution and trend (short-term), Population size inside the Special Protection Area (SPA) network, Assessment of change in conservation status and extinction risk.
Audit notes: contains further methodological detail on the information in the Report sheet.
BoCC comparison: details changes between the 4th and 5th BoCC assessments.
IUCN GB Red List comparison: details changes in extinction risk between the first and second IUCN GB assessments, explaining reasons for status updates.
Habitats Regulations UK seabird breeding distribution maps
For 2019–2024 Habitats Regulations Reporting, breeding distribution estimates were updated for the following 25 seabird species using information from the fourth seabird census of Britain and Ireland (Burnell et al. 2023): Arctic Skua, Arctic Tern, Atlantic Puffin, Black Guillemot, Black-headed Gull, Black-legged Kittiwake, Common Guillemot, Common Gull, Common Tern, European Storm-petrel, Great Black-backed Gull, Great Cormorant, Great Skua, Herring Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Leach’s Storm-petrel, Little Tern, Manx Shearwater, Mediterranean Gull, Fulmar, Northern Gannet, Razorbill, Roseate Tern, Sandwich Tern, Shag.
The “Change in Seabird Breeding Occupancy for Habitats Regulations Reporting 2019–2024" PDF shows how breeding distribution has altered over the last 20 years. Each map shows the current distribution and changes in occupancy at a 10 km2 resolution, comparing current breeding distributions (Burnell et al. 2023) with historical baselines (Mitchell et al. 2004).
Distribution change maps for Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull include only the breeding distributions of birds nesting in natural locations (coastal or inland), not of birds nesting on human-made structures. It was not possible to assess change in breeding distribution for urban nesters; however, current breeding distribution maps can be found in the “Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull Natural and Urban Breeding Occupancy for Habitats Regulations Reporting 2019–2024" PDF.
For all other bird species, distribution maps from the 2019 Article 12 Report were used. These maps can be found in the Bird Atlas 2007-2011 (Balmer et al. 2013), available online from BTO’s Bird Atlas Mapstore.
For further information, visit the Habitats Regulations Reporting for the period 2019 to 2024 webpage.
These resources may not be fully accessible for all users. If you need copies in a different or more accessible format, please contact Communications@jncc.gov.uk.
