Article 12 Birds Directive Report 2019
Reporting obligations under the Birds Directive are set out in Article 12, which requires reports on implementation of the Directive every six years.
The 11th UK report was submitted to the European Commission in October 2019 and covers the implementation period 2013–2018. Previous reports can be found on The National Archives website.
What is the Article 12 report?
EU Member States are required to report on the implementation of the EU Birds Directive (under Article 12) every six years. The 11th UK report was submitted to the European Commission in October 2019.
The report includes both a General Report on the implementation of the Directive, and a Bird Species Status and Trends Report containing individual assessments for 268 bird species in metropolitan UK that are subject to the Directive.
The General Report (Annex A) covers both metropolitan UK and Gibraltar (with respective sub-sections for each). Separate Bird Species Status and Trends reports (Annex B) for metropolitan UK and for Gibraltar were submitted. For information on Gibraltar status and trend reports, please contact stephen.warr@gibraltar.gov.gi.
The report is the culmination of more than two years of joint working between JNCC, the country nature conservation bodies of the UK (on behalf of UK government and the devolved administrations) and of organisations that provided information on bird population, trends and distribution: British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT). Information from Gibraltar was provided by HM Government of Gibraltar (Department of the Environment, Sustainability, Heritage and Climate Change) and Wildlife (Gibraltar) Limited.
Report elements and background information
The report submitted to the European Commission consists of the following:
- General Report (Annex A) and appendices.
- Bird Species Status and Trends Report (Annex B), containing separate spreadsheets for details of 'Pressures & Threats' and of 'Conservation Measures'.
A document outlining the UK's approach to Annex B of the report has also been produced. Additional information on the reporting process is available on the EIONET website.
Additional information
As part of the 2019 UK Birds Directive Report, the UK submitted a set of species distribution maps to the European Commission. This information was provided in the form of ArcGIS shapefiles and is currently available on the European Environment Agency's Eionet Central Data Repository, along with all other parts of the UK’s report.
Distribution maps for species in metropolitan UK were generously made available by the British Trust for Ornithology, the Scottish Ornithologists Club and BirdWatch Ireland from the Bird Atlas 2007-2011 (Balmer et al. 2013).
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