Species

A new list of Northern Ireland Priority Species has been published. These are species which require conservation action because of their decline, rarity and importance in an all-Ireland and UK context. It is intended that this list will be subject to reviews on an annual basis.

During the preparation of the Northern Ireland Biodiversity Strategy (2002) an initial list of 271 Northern Ireland Priority Species requiring conservation action was identified. A more comprehensive list of Northern Ireland Priority Species was later published in March 2004.These Priority Species lists formed the basis for selecting species requiring Northern Ireland Species Action Plans (SAPs).

A review of the UK priority species started in 2005. This was a thorough and inclusive process which involved a large number of people and organisations and led to a large increase in Priority Species, from 557 to 1150. These proposals were agreed by the Governments of all four UK administrations in August 2007.

A review of Northern Ireland Priority Species has recently been completed by the Northern Ireland Species Delivery Group. This includes UK priority species occurring in Northern Ireland as well as threatened Irish species and species requiring conservation action. The new Northern Ireland priority species list stands at 481 species, an increase from 271 on the ‘old’ list. View the new list of Northern Ireland Priority Species (.PDF 170Kb)

Some groups have yet to be fully up-dated. In particular, those ‘grouped’ species from the 2004 list e.g. commercial marine fish and deep water fish species. Also, for some groups such as lichens, new information is being gathered but this is not fully available at the moment. For this reason CNCC and NIBG have agreed the facility to update the list as new information becomes available.