Desk studies
What protections sit on this land?
One point query returns the stack: SSSI, SAC, SPA, Ramsar, ancient woodland, each layer naming its statutory regime.
GET /v1/conservation?point=54.52,-3.15
Conservation & Nature API
The UK's protected nature, layered.
SSSIs, SACs, SPAs, Ramsar wetlands, ancient woodland, national parks and priority habitats, from the four national statutory bodies, served as map-ready geometry with each body's licence and attribution on every record. Protections overlap, and one call returns the stack, kept current with the source registers.
Borrowdale, Lake DistrictNational Park
GET /v1/conservation?point=54.52,-3.15&radius=250 → 1 designations
4
National custodians
10
Designation registers
1
Schema, stable ids
OGL
Open Government Licence
The stack
One point. Every protection on it.
Protected nature does not come one designation at a time. This is a real point in Borrowdale: a national park, a national nature reserve, two Special Areas of Conservation, an SSSI and ancient woodland cover the same ground, and each carries its own legal regime with its own consent rules. Miss one and a desk study is wrong.
Borrowdale, the Lake District · point=54.52,-3.15
One call at one pointNational Park
GET /v1/conservation?point=54.52,-3.15&radius=250
{
"type": "national_park",
"name": "Lake District",
"designated": "1951",
"area_ha": 236234,
"custodian": "Natural England"
}
→ layer 1 of 6 in this responseGET /v1/conservation with a point returns every layer that covers it in one response, widest first. Six layers here, one payload. The answer is the stack, not the nearest match.
The reconciliation
Four statutory bodies. One record shape.
Natural England, NatureScot, Natural Resources Wales and Northern Ireland's DAERA each notify and map their own sites, in their own formats, on two different national grids, with their own update cycles. We reconcile all four into one schema, give every designation a stable identifier, and track changes as the custodians revise their registers.
Natural England
England · EPSG:27700
SSSINNRNational Park
NatureScot
Scotland · EPSG:27700
SSSINSAWild Land
Natural Resources Wales
Wales · EPSG:27700
SSSIAONBNNR
DAERA
Northern Ireland · EPSG:29903
ASSIRamsarMCZ
One schema24 designation types
id stable across register revisions
designation the nation's own term, never translated
geometry EPSG:4326, reprojected from both grids
attribution the statutory body, on every recordDesignations are never translated. Northern Ireland's ASSI stays an ASSI, because presenting it as an SSSI would misstate the law that protects the land.
The alternative
The pipeline you don't have to build.
Without the API, conservation data is a project. Twenty-four designation types from four statutory bodies, each published its own way. Downloads that start going stale the day you fetch them. Reprojection from two national grids. MultiPolygons that arrive broken and need repair. Then a site is notified or a boundary amended, and your copy is quietly wrong.
What you'd build
NE · EnglandNatureScot · ScotlandNRW · WalesDAERA · N. Ireland
fetch
Twenty-four designation types from four statutory bodies, each published its own way.
reproject
British National Grid and Irish Grid into WGS84, without smearing a boundary.
repair
MultiPolygons that arrive self-intersecting and break spatial queries.
reconcile
Overlapping designations resolved per point: SSSI under SAC under national park.
watch
Notifications, amendments and denotifications, every cycle, forever.
host
The database, the spatial index and the uptime.
…every cycle, forever. Or:
What you call
We run that pipeline so you don't have to. Ingest, reconciliation, geometry repair and serving all happen on our infrastructure. You call one endpoint, and the stale-copy problem is ours.
One request
GET /v1/conservation?point=54.52,-3.15&radius=250
→ 200 OK · 6 designations, one stack
geometry EPSG:4326, repaired, valid
regimes the law named on every record
attribution inline, the statutory body named
provenance snapshot and source dates, on every responseEverything on the left, already done.
This is infrastructure, not a download. We run the pipeline; you build the product.
The record
Every record names the law that applies.
A stable identifier, the exact statutory regime, the custodian's own condition wording, the boundary as EPSG:4326 geometry, and Natural England's attribution inline. The record repeats the register rather than paraphrasing it.
Borrowdale Woodland Complex
Natural England · Lake District, Cumbria
GET /v1/conservation/vco_des_01J9RVN8
{
"id": "vco_des_01J9RVN8",
"type": "site_of_special_scientific_interest",
"name": "Borrowdale Woodland Complex",
"jurisdiction": "england",
"regime": "Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981",
"condition": "Unfavourable - Recovering",
"custodian": "Natural England",
"geometry": {
"type": "Polygon",
"coordinates": [[
[-3.1581, 54.5243],
[-3.1449, 54.5228],
[-3.1467, 54.5138],
[-3.1602, 54.5170],
[-3.1581, 54.5243]
]]
},
"attribution": "© Natural England copyright. OGL v3.0.",
"provenance": {
"snapshotId": "conservation-20260618-01",
"sources": [{
"custodian": "Natural England",
"releaseDate": "2026-06-11",
"fetchedAt": "2026-06-13T02:47:31Z"
}]
}
}
The cycle
When the register moves, the API moves.
Designations move. Sites are notified and denotified, boundaries are amended, habitats are remapped. A shapefile you downloaded in the spring knows none of this.
The designation wireJun 2026
Thu11
Fri12
Sat13
Sun14
Mon15
Tue16
Wed17
Thu18
2026-06-11 · register release
Natural England amends a site notification
vco_des_01J9RWFN · boundary amended
2026-06-13 · ingested
fetched 02:47:31Z · reconciled · geometry validated
re-served under the same id vco_des_01J9RWFN
2026-06-18 · your next call
"id": "vco_des_01J9RWFN"
"snapshotId": "conservation-20260618-01"
"releaseDate": "2026-06-11"
"fetchedAt": "2026-06-13T02:47:31Z"
You never host a copy, so you never host a stale one.
The datasets
Every designation, on its own page.
Coverage follows what the statutory bodies publish. Each dataset page carries its own coverage, sources and schema, including what is not there yet.
01
Sites of Special Scientific Interest
SSSIs in England and Wales and Northern Ireland's ASSIs. Scotland's are next, and we say so.
View dataset →02Special Areas of Conservation
Habitats and species of European importance, all four nations.
View dataset →03Special Protection Areas
Sites classified for rare, vulnerable and migratory birds, all four nations.
View dataset →04Ramsar Wetlands
Wetlands of international importance, listed under the Ramsar Convention.
View dataset →05Ancient Woodland
Woodland on the inventories since 1600 in England and Wales, 1750 in Scotland.
View dataset →06National Parks
The national parks of England and Wales, as designated boundaries.
View dataset →07National Landscapes and AONBs
National Landscapes, AONBs and Scotland's National Scenic Areas.
View dataset →08Priority Habitats
Habitat parcels for biodiversity and BNG screening, all four nations.
View dataset →09Marine Protected Areas
Marine Conservation Zones and Scotland's Marine Protected Areas.
View dataset →10Nature Reserves
National and Local Nature Reserves, each served as its own type.
View dataset →The API
You already know how to query it.
Conservation answers the same location queries as the rest of the platform. Point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or a single designation by its identifier. One key, one schema, all four nations.
One call returns everything protecting a point. Over Borrowdale that is six overlapping designations, from the national park down to the woodland parcel — the same stack the plate above draws.
Query by point
GET /v1/conservation?point=54.52,-3.15
{
"count": 6,
"results": [
{
"id": "vco_des_01J9RTK2",
"type": "national_park",
"name": "Lake District"
},
{
"id": "vco_des_01J9RSXE",
"type": "national_nature_reserve",
"name": "Borrowdale Rainforest"
},
{
"id": "vco_des_01J9RQWD",
"type": "sac",
"name": "Borrowdale Woodland Complex"
},
{
"id": "vco_des_01J9RVN8",
"type": "site_of_special_scientific_interest",
"name": "Borrowdale Woodland Complex"
},
{
"id": "vco_des_01J9RWKM",
"type": "ancient_woodland",
"name": "Johnny Wood"
},
{
"id": "vco_des_01J9RXDQ",
"type": "sac",
"name": "River Derwent & Bassenthwaite Lake"
}
]
}The use cases
Built for what you're building.
One API, four jobs. Each of these is a question the API answers in one request.
HRA screening
Which protected sites are within 5 km?
Radius queries return the SACs, SPAs and Ramsar wetlands around a plan or project: the trigger list for a Habitats Regulations assessment.
GET /v1/conservation?point=...&radius=5000&types=sac,spa,ramsar
BNG and land tools
Which priority habitats does this parcel touch?
Polygon queries return habitat parcels with area computed from the geometry, ready for biodiversity net gain screening and land management products.
POST /v1/conservation/query · types=priority_habitat
Statutory bodies and LPAs
We already publish this. Why run a server too?
Publishing through the standard routes is the whole job. The layers arrive here hosted, versioned and queryable, alongside every neighbouring authority's. No GIS server to procure, no API to run.
One stack, served at /v1/conservation
Your GIS team has better things to do than stitch four custodians' registers back together every quarter.
The guarantees
Answers you can defend.
Licence
Open Government Licence sources, with each record carrying its register's licence terms inline.
Attribution
The custodian is named on every record, so attribution is never guesswork.
Provenance
Every response names its snapshot, the custodian's release date and the moment we ingested it.
Layering
Every designation at a point comes back in one response, each under its own stable id.
