Special Area of Conservation

These are prime wildlife conservation areas in the country, considered to be important on a European as well as Irish level. Most Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) are in the countryside, although a few sites reach into town or city landscapes, such as Dublin Bay and Cork Harbour. Detailed conservation objectives are available for some SACs and as additional ones are approved they will be posted on the NPWS website (www.npws.ie). The legal basis on which SACs are selected and designated is the EU Habitats Directive, transposed into Irish law in the as amended in 1998 and 2005. The Directive lists certain habitats and species that must be protected within SACs This is a national dataset and is split into two separate file download: SACs within the bounds of the ITM coordinate reference system and off-shore SACs which are provided in WGS 84.

Simple

Alternate title

SAC
Date (Creation)
2015-01-15T00:00:00
Date (Publication)
2015-01-15T00:00:00
Date (Revision)
2022-08-16T00:00:00
Citation identifier
PS.IE.EPA.PROT_SAC
Purpose

To report on and manage Special Area of Conservation designations within the Republic of Ireland.
Status
Completed
Point of contact
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht

National Parks and Wildlife Service

datadelivery@ahg.gov.ie

Point of contact
Maintenance and update frequency
As needed

GemetInspireTheme

  • Protected sites

GEMET - Concepts, version 3.1

  • protection of animals

  • protection of species

  • protection of birds

  • wildlife protection

  • terrestrial ecosystem

  • biodiversity

  • ecological

  • habitat

  • ecology

  • animal species

  • wildlife sanctuary

National Parks and Wildlife Service, Ireland

  • Special Area of Conservation

  • SAC

  • National Parks and Wildlife Service

  • NPWS

  • biodiversity

  • habitat

  • species

  • habitat protection

  • heritage

  • National Biodiversity Plan

ISO 3166

  • IE
Use limitation

Data is for public use under Creative Commons CC-By 4.0
Access constraints
License
Other constraints

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Spatial representation type
Vector
Denominator
50000
Language
English
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Biota
N
S
E
W
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Begin date
1980-01-01T00:00:00
End date
2014-01-24T00:00:00

Vertical extent

Minimum value
0
Maximum value
1014

Vertical CS

No information provided.

Vertical datum

Reference system identifier
http://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/29902

EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset EPSG 2009-11-25

Distribution format
Name Version

ESRI Shapefile

10.x
Distributor contact
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

Environmental Protection Agency

Informatics

gis@epa.ie

Publisher
OnLine resource
Protocol Linkage Name

text/html

 		https://www.npws.ie/maps-and-data/designated-site-data/download-boundary-data

View and Download Data
OnLine resource
Protocol Linkage Name

text/html

 		http://webservices.npws.ie/arcgis/services/NPWS/NPWSDesignatedAreas/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS

WMS GetCapabilities
OnLine resource
Protocol Linkage Name

image/png

 		http://webservices.npws.ie/arcgis/rest/services/NPWS/NPWSDesignatedAreas/MapServer/3

WMS GetMap
Hierarchy level
Dataset

Conformance result

Title

INSPIRE Data Specification on Protected sites
Alternate title

INSPIRE Data Specifications v3.2
Date (Publication)
2014-04-17
Explanation

The INSPIRE Directive or INSPIRE lays down a general framework for a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the purposes of European Community environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.

Pass
No

Conformance result

Title

COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Alternate title

INSPIRE Interoperability Regulation
Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Explanation

Level of conformance with the COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Pass
No
Statement

This spatial dataset and associated web services is currently presented in Irish Transverse Mercator projection. The majority of site boundaries were originally digitised from Ordnance Survey of Ireland 1:10560 six-inch raster data in Irish Grid. Over time an increasing number of site boundaries in this dataset will be replotted to Ordnance Survey of Ireland 1:5000 vector mapping in Irish Transverse Mercator. The spatial dataset and associated web services contain two feature level metadata fields: SOURCE_SCALE AND SOURCE_CRS to identify the source scale and projection that the site boundary feature is derived from.

Metadata

File identifier
d86f3a31-affe-4875-b270-895387012442 XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Date stamp
2023-08-21T11:01:07.639Z
Metadata standard name

ISDI Metadata Profile
Metadata standard version

1.2
Metadata author
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht

National Parks and Wildlife Service

datadelivery@ahg.gov.ie

Author
 
 

Overviews

overview
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Spatial extent

thumbnail

Keywords

GEMET - Concepts, version 3.1

animal species biodiversity ecological ecology habitat protection of animals protection of birds protection of species terrestrial ecosystem wildlife protection wildlife sanctuary
GemetInspireTheme

Protected sites
National Parks and Wildlife Service, Ireland

NPWS National Biodiversity Plan National Parks and Wildlife Service SAC Special Area of Conservation biodiversity habitat habitat protection heritage species


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