The Habitats Regulations ensure that European sites are protected and managed and continue to operate, as they have done since their original designation. This includes reporting on the sites and the network every six years.
The term ‘European site’ is being used to refer to what were previously known as ‘Natura sites’. This recognises that Special Protection Areas (SPAs) and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) protect species and habitats shared across Europe.
NatureScot has produced conservation status assessments for the terrestrial habitats, marine habitats, and terrestrial and freshwater species reported on in Scotland, along with marine mammals and bird populations relevant to Scotland (including species sub-species and relevant breeding and non-breeding populations thereof) that are reported on at a UK level.
There is also an Implementation Report that gives an overview of the implementation of measures taken in Scotland to meet the provisions of the Birds and Habitats Directives, and to achieve the objectives of those Directives during the period 2019-2024.
The Implementation Report is published by Scottish Government and the conservation status assessments are available on Statistics.gov.scot.
JNCC have published the Approaches document which sets out how the assessments and reporting was carried out. Resources used in the country level reporting (such as the guidance) can be accessed via the JNCC 2019-2024 Habitats Regulations Reporting web page.
JNCC also produce a PDF for each feature (habitat or species). These are available on request email [email protected].
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