March 26, 2024

On the 1st of March 2024, the Ukrainian Ministry of Environment presented the Biodiversity Viewer, the new tool for biodiversity conservation.

This tool was developed by the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG) with the support of The Habitat Foundation. The Biodiversity Viewer extracts species occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which provides the largest amount of well-documented data on species in the world. To date, GBIF contains more than 2.5 million records from Ukraine.

The viewer produces a map with the locations of sightings of species, as well as their likely distribution areas. A report in the form of a table gives more details about the sightings, such as the observation date, the number of individuals, age, activity etc., as well as the conservation and legal protection status of each species. Important information for impact assessments.

The application is available for free, to anyone who needs data on biodiversity. Hence, when you plan forestry activities, the construction of buildings or infrastructure, the establishment of protected areas, the preparation of EIA reports or reallocate farming activities, you can easily collect information about the presence of protected species you have to take into account when drawing up your plan.

On March 25 and 26, the viewer was also presented at the Empowering Biodiversity Research III conference, organised by the financer of this project, the Dutch GBIF node NLBIF.

The application is available at the link: https://uncg.org.ua/biodiversity-viewer/

The poster about the viewer can be downloaded here: download PDF.