What is biodiversity?

Biodiversity is quite simply the variety of living things on Earth. Many aspects of our lives are affected by the natural environment - habitats support life by regulating climate and re-cycling air and water. Animals and plants provide food, clothing and medicines. Wildlife enriches our lives in lots of other ways too.

What is biodiversity data used for?

The data is used for a wide variety of purposes by many organisations and individuals. Some examples are:

• Statutory decision-making processes such as planning applications
• Guiding policies on nature conservation and developing biodiversity action plans (BAPs)
• Management of land including nature reserves and roadside verges
• Identifying important sites (statutory and non-statutory)
• Ecological research

Who can access the data?

Anyone can contact NEYEDC and access the habitat and species data. For details on how to do this see Data requests in the Downloads section. There are also a number of other organisations who deal with biodiversity data. For more details click on Biodiversity Links. 

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