Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) in Excel

This MS Excel workbook provides a regular summary update for Natura 2000 SAC sites in Ireland, providing Natura 2000 site-related details, including lists of the habitats and species listed in Annex 1 and Annex II of the Habitats Directive for which each Natura 2000 site is selected.

Information in this workbook is based on 3 sources at the time of issue:
1. Ireland’s annual Natura 2000 Standard Data Form submission to the European Commission (see https://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/natura2000/sites/index_en.htm#SDF),
2. the list of currently published Statutory Instrument (S.I.) regulations in the Iris Oifigiúil, Irish Statute Book, for each site which are produced on an ongoing basis throughout the year. Statutory Instruments are produced as the final stage in the site designation process (see https://www.npws.ie/protected-sites/designation-process) and
3. the list of sites for which NPWS detailed Site-Specific Conservation Objectives (SSCO) have been published.

The habitats and species for which each SAC is selected are referred to here as a site’s Qualifying Interests. These correspond to the ‘Natural habitat type and animal and plant species lists’ referred to in Schedule 3 of the Regulations for SACs.

The Sites worksheet contains the following Natura 2000 SDF Fields: SITE CODE, SITE CODE, SITE NAME, DATE, LONGITUDE, LATITUDE, SITE AREA and AREA UPDATE DATE; along with Iris Oifigiúil, Irish Statute Book regulations fields: S.I. Number, S.I. Date and S.I. URL; and detailed Site-Specific Conservation Objective fields: SSCO Version, SSCO Version Date, SSCO URL.
The Habitats and Species worksheets reflect the most recent Natura 2000 Standard Data Form data.

IMPORTANT NOTE: this information may be superseded by more recently published SI regulations for a Natura 2000 site. The Update worksheet contains a summary of known Qualifying Interest updates at the time of publication.

Leave a Reply