GBIF Species Occurrence Scraper — Biodiversity Records

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🎯 What this scrapes

GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) aggregates species occurrence records from museums, herbaria, citizen-science apps and government surveys into one searchable index of over three billion records. Its raw API is generous and keyless, but it forces callers to look up an internal taxonKey before they can filter by species, and most occurrence records are sparse — a huge share of optional fields are simply absent on any given row. This Actor resolves a plain species name to that taxon key for you, then returns fully flattened, typed rows so a distribution map, an ESG nature-risk screen, or a species checklist lands straight in a spreadsheet.

🔥 What we handle for you

resolves a species name to GBIF's internal taxon key automatically pages past sparse, deeply nested records into one clean flat row each stops cleanly at GBIF's ~100 000-record offset ceiling instead of erroring into it retries transient 429/5xx responses with backoff instead of failing the whole run

💡 Use cases

• Build a species distribution map from georeferenced occurrence records.
• Screen a project site or supply chain footprint for nearby protected or at-risk species (ESG / nature-risk analysis).
• Assemble a country or region species checklist for an environmental impact assessment.
• Track how observation records for a species change year over year across citizen-science and museum datasets.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Type a species name (or leave the default) — most other fields have sensible defaults.
3. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
scientificName	string	no	'Puma concolor'	Species name to resolve to a GBIF taxon key. Takes priority over taxonKey.
taxonKey	integer	no	—	Raw GBIF taxon key, used only when scientificName is empty.
query	string	no	—	Free-text search across occurrence records.
countryCode	string	no	—	Restrict to one ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 country code, e.g. US.
yearFrom / yearTo	integer	no	—	Only occurrences recorded within this year range.
hasCoordinate	boolean	no	True	Restrict to georeferenced records.
basisOfRecord	string	no	—	Restrict to one basis-of-record type, e.g. HUMAN_OBSERVATION.
datasetKey	string	no	—	Restrict to one GBIF publisher dataset (UUID).
maxResults	integer	no	100	Stop after this many occurrences. Each row is one billed result.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": false}	GBIF is a public API and does not need a proxy.

Example input

{
  "scientificName": "Puma concolor",
  "hasCoordinate": true,
  "maxResults": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

Field	Type	Notes
occurrence_key	integer	GBIF occurrence identifier.
scientific_name	string	Scientific name as recorded.
accepted_scientific_name	string	GBIF's accepted taxon name.
taxon_rank	string	Taxonomic rank, e.g. SPECIES.
kingdom / phylum / class_ / order / family / genus / species	string	Full classification.
event_date / year / month / day	string / integer	When the occurrence was recorded.
country / country_code	string	Where the occurrence was recorded.
locality / state_province	string	Finer-grained location detail.
decimal_latitude / decimal_longitude	number	Coordinates in decimal degrees.
coordinate_uncertainty_m	number	Coordinate uncertainty, in metres.
elevation_m / depth_m	number	Elevation / depth, in metres.
basis_of_record	string	How the occurrence was recorded.
dataset_name / dataset_key	string	Publishing dataset.
publishing_org_key	string	GBIF publishing organization UUID.
institution_code / collection_code / catalog_number	string	Specimen/record provenance.
recorded_by / identified_by	string	Who recorded/identified the occurrence.
license	string	Data license, e.g. CC_BY_4_0.
issues	array	GBIF data-quality issue flags.

Example output

{
  "occurrence_key": 5938145577,
  "scientific_name": "Puma concolor (Linnaeus, 1771)",
  "taxon_rank": "SPECIES",
  "kingdom": "Animalia",
  "class_": "Mammalia",
  "family": "Felidae",
  "genus": "Puma",
  "species": "Puma concolor",
  "year": 2026,
  "month": 1,
  "day": 2,
  "country": "United States of America",
  "country_code": "US",
  "state_province": "Oregon",
  "decimal_latitude": 44.59237,
  "decimal_longitude": -121.27005,
  "basis_of_record": "HUMAN_OBSERVATION",
  "dataset_name": "iNaturalist research-grade observations",
  "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode",
  "issues": ["CONTINENT_DERIVED_FROM_COORDINATES", "TAXON_ID_NOT_FOUND"]
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.05	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.002	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $2.05. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

• Live search results only — this Actor does not use GBIF's asynchronous bulk Darwin Core Archive download.
• No media/image download — occurrence records may reference photos, but files are not fetched or mirrored.
• GBIF's search API caps how deep any single search can page (~100 000 records); narrow by country, year, or basis of record to reach records beyond that.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. GBIF is free and keyless — no account, no auth header, no signup.

What if my species name doesn't match?

The Actor logs the resolved taxon and rank so you can verify the match. If GBIF can't resolve a name at all, the Actor falls back to an unfiltered-by-taxon search rather than silently returning nothing.

Why are so many fields empty?

GBIF occurrence records are contributed by thousands of independent institutions with wildly varying completeness — a museum specimen from 1950 rarely has GPS coordinates, for example. Every field is nullable by design; this Actor never fabricates a value GBIF didn't report.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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