Special Protection Areas (Scotland)

SPAs in Scotland are classified by Scottish Ministers . These are areas of the most important habitat for rare (listed on Annex I to the Directive) and regularly occurring migratory birds within the European Union. SPAs are classified under the EC Birds Directive (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/birds-directive_en) and together with SACs, form the Natura 2000 network (https://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/natura2000/index_en.htm).

Proposed Special Protection Areas (pSPA) may be subject to change prior to classification.

Data links

Link to the data	Format	File added	Data preview
Download NatureScot Map Viewer , Format: N/A, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	N/A	06 March 2025	Not available
Download NatureScot OpenData Hub , Format: N/A, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	N/A	06 March 2025	Not available
Download GeoJSON (EPSG:4326) , Format: ZIP, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	ZIP	06 March 2025	Not available
Download GML (EPSG:4258) , Format: ZIP, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	ZIP	06 March 2025	Not available
Download Geopackage (EPSG:27700) , Format: ZIP, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	ZIP	06 March 2025	Not available
Download ESRI File geodatabase (EPSG:27700) , Format: ZIP, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	ZIP	06 March 2025	Not available
Download ESRI Shapefile (EPSG:27700) , Format: ZIP, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	ZIP	06 March 2025	Not available
Download protectedareas:spa , Format: N/A, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	N/A	06 March 2025	Not available
Download spa , Format: N/A, Dataset: Special Protection Areas (Scotland)	N/A	06 March 2025	Not available

View additional metadata

Added to data.gov.uk: 2025-03-05
Access contraints: Available under an Open Government Licence licence https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Harvest GUID: CB547E72-E70A-4E66-9ED1-88ED1BC50DE5
Extent: Latitude: 61.8049° to °; Longitude: -9.1462° to 0.0823°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date: 2016-10-05 (creation); 2023-08-29 (revision)
Frequency of update: continual
Responsible party: NatureScot (pointOfContact)
ISO 19139 resource type: dataset
Metadata language: eng
Source Metadata: XML; HTML