Open Data publishing is the default
The NPWS and Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage encourage the free dissemination of biodiversity data and aims to publish its data holdings into the future, where possible, as Open Data licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
Publicly available datasets are available via the NPWS website at the following web page:
Summary discovery metadata for NPWS data projects are also published at the following public sector online data catalogues:
The re-use terms and required attribution will be defined in the the full project metadata records embedded in the project data download. Please also read some important advisory notes on NPWS data usage and limitations here.
NPWS Data Available by Request
There are a number of NPWS datasets that are not available as Open Data. The key reasons are:
- the protection of the environment to which such information relates, such as the location of rare species – see our guidelines on access and usage of NPWS sensitive data;
- the Intellectual Property Rights or copyright of the data, or part thereof, belong to a third party that has not given permission for its re-use;
- there is personal data in the dataset and data protection restrictions apply;
- the dataset is unpublished as it is still in draft form.
Making a Data Request
To request a copy of sensitive or unpublished data held by NPWS, please submit an application on this downloadable data request form.
For general queries regarding biodiversity data (habitat and species data, ecological data publication, data downloads, Open Data publications, applications, data standards and more) please contact us by email - NPWS_data@npws.gov.ie.
For general queries regarding GIS and remote sensing data (spatial and remote sensing data publications, spatial and remote sensing data downloads, web map services, web map applications, third party licences and more) please contact us by email - NPWS_GIS@npws.gov.ie.
Providing Feedback
Have you used NPWS data for an app or publication/report? or do you have any feedback on the data products provided through this website and https://www.data.gov.ie ? If so, NPWS would really like to hear feedback from you by email NPWS_data@npws.gov.ie or via our Twitter account @npwsbiodata.