EU Species Preferred Habitat Records — EEA BISE

Keyless. Pay per record. The habitat types Europe's protected species prefer.

This actor turns the European Environment Agency (EEA) Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE) into clean, per-record data — the preferred and suitable habitat types reported for Europe's protected species. Each run reads the EEA's keyless DiscoData SQL service and delivers one row per species, structured for conservation and land-management analysis, reusable with acknowledgement of the EEA, with no personal data of any kind.

What this is, in one paragraph

Every protected species has habitat it depends on — the environments where it lives and breeds. This actor reads the species preferred-habitat table and delivers one record per species: the EUNIS SPECIES identifier, the PREFERRED habitat categories, and the SUITABLE/OCCASIONAL habitat categories — all carried as filed. It is the species-to-habitat layer of Europe's biodiversity reporting, the habitat companion to the conservation-status and threat cells.

Who buys this and for what job

• Conservation planners matching species to the habitats they depend on across a landscape.
• Agri-environment and restoration teams targeting habitat types that support the most protected species.
• Biodiversity researchers analysing habitat breadth across species.
• Data engineers who want the BISE species preferred-habitat table as clean rows from a keyless source.

EEA licence — reuse with acknowledgement

One licence rider travels on every record. EEA data may be reused, including commercially, provided the source is acknowledged: "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)." Where third-party content is marked, it keeps its own terms. These are reported categories as filed — not an assessment of this actor's making.

Species grain — no person data

The unit of every record is a species and its habitat preferences — a species and short habitat-type lists, never a person. BISE reporting is at species level: the EUNIS id identifies a species, never a person; there is no contact or named-individual field in the source table, and none is selected or emitted. The preferred and suitable/occasional fields are short controlled habitat-type lists, not free narrative. A person-key guard runs on every record as a backstop.

A note on scale, honestly

The source table holds 54,438 rows as verified by an exact COUNT(*) at build time, which matches the planning index for this category exactly — and is exactly one row per protected species (54,438 distinct EUNIS identifiers). Where a species has no reported habitat preference, the fields are null, carried as filed. The live count above is authoritative.

Sample output

Real rows from a live run of this actor (first 5 rows, selected columns).

One full record from the same run, exactly as delivered:

{
  "record_id": "5",
  "species_eunis_id": "5",
  "preferred_habitats": null,
  "suitable_occasional_habitats": null,
  "source": "EEA Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE) — preferred habitat types of protected species",
  "source_url": "https://discodata.eea.europa.eu/",
  "licence": "European Environment Agency (EEA) Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE) / Habitats Directive reporting. Reuse is permitted, including for commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged: 'Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)'. Third-party content, where marked, keeps its own terms.",
  "attribution": "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA), Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE) (discodata.eea.europa.eu).",
  "disclaimer": "Preferred and suitable/occasional HABITAT types reported for Europe's protected species, at species grain from the EEA BISE database. Each record carries the EUNIS SPECIES identifier and the reported PREFERRED habitat categories and SUITABLE/OCCASIONAL habitat categories (short controlled habitat-type lists) VERBATIM. Species grain — the EUNIS id identifies a species, never a person; there is no contact or named-individual field in the source, none is selected or emitted, and a person-key guard runs on every record.",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-25T17:34:06Z"
}

Pricing

Event	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold / Platinum / Diamond
species_preferred_habitat_record	$0.05	$0.045	$0.04	$0.0335

Delivered before charged. Blocked runs and empty results cost nothing.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
maxRecords	integer	500	Ceiling on records delivered and billed.

Output

One JSON object per species. Representative example (values as reported):

{
  "record_id": "8",
  "species_eunis_id": "8",
  "preferred_habitats": "rivers and lakes, wetlands",
  "suitable_occasional_habitats": "grassland",
  "source": "EEA Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE) — preferred habitat types of protected species",
  "observed_at": "2026-08-30T00:00:00Z"
}

An unbilled RUN_RECEIPT records the robots check, the filters, rows seen and delivered, and whether charged equals delivered.

Field reference

Each record is one species and its habitat preferences. Identity: record_id and species_eunis_id (the EUNIS species identifier, joinable to species dictionaries). Habitat: preferred_habitats (the preferred habitat categories) and suitable_occasional_habitats (the suitable or occasional categories). Provenance travels on every record: source, source_url, licence, attribution, disclaimer, and observed_at.

How a run works

A run first re-reads the source host's robots posture from your runtime — the EEA DiscoData host — and stops at the door if that ever changes. It pages the BISE species preferred-habitat table, ordered by the species identifier, and flattens each row to one record — carrying every habitat category verbatim, never anything person-shaped — delivered before it is charged, so a blocked or empty run costs you nothing. The actor stops at your maxRecords ceiling and records charge_equals_delivered in the receipt.

Coverage and scope

The table holds 54,438 rows — one per protected species. Because each record carries the species_eunis_id and its habitat categories, segmenting by species or filtering to species that prefer a given habitat type is straightforward. Pull the whole table to seed a biodiversity warehouse, or join species_eunis_id to a species dictionary for names.

Working with the data

The preferences are a habitat-matching layer, and the fields make them actionable. Because every record lists a species' preferred and suitable habitats, an analyst can count the species that depend on a given habitat type, cross-reference species habitat breadth against conservation status (from the status cell), and target the habitats whose loss would affect the most protected species.

Cost guidance

One species_preferred_habitat_record per delivered row: cost = rows delivered × your plan's per-record price. 1,000 rows is $50 (Free) / $33.50 (Gold).

Honest limitations

• As reported. Habitat categories are as filed for the Habitats Directive reporting; this actor reformats, it does not audit or recompute.
• Nulls where unreported. Species with no reported habitat preference carry null fields, kept as filed.
• Category lists, not maps. These are reported habitat-type categories, not spatial habitat maps.
• Acknowledge the EEA, and note there is no person data of any kind.

Differentiation

It is the species-to-HABITAT grain, distinct from eu-species-threat-records (threats) and eu-species-conservation-status-records (status). Its specific job is the BISE species preferred habitats.

A note on identifiers

The species_eunis_id is the stable EUNIS identifier for a species — a species, never a person — and it is the one row-key of this table: exactly one record per protected species. It is the join key that attaches habitat preferences to the conservation-status and threat cells and to any external species dictionary. Because the identifier is stable across every BISE cell and reporting cycle, a single join brings a species' status, threats and preferred habitats together with no fuzzy matching.

Reading the habitat fields

The preferred_habitats and suitable_occasional_habitats fields carry short controlled lists of broad habitat categories — the environments the Habitats Directive reporting associates with each species — rather than free prose. That makes them straightforward to split on the comma and pivot into a species-by-habitat matrix: count the species that name a given habitat as preferred, separate the species that only tolerate a habitat occasionally from those that depend on it, and rank habitats by how many protected species rely on them. Because the values are carried verbatim, the analysis rests on exactly what member states reported, and the null rows — species with no reported preference — are kept as filed so the table's coverage is transparent rather than silently trimmed.

The NexGen Signal family

Part of the NexGen Signal family of pay-per-record data products:

• EU Species Threat Records — EEA BISE
• EU Protected Site Positive Impact Records — EEA
• EU Protected Site Species Inventory Records — EEA
• EU Waterbody Quality Records — EEA
• EU Nitrate Monitoring Records — EEA

Source: European Environment Agency (EEA), Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE) (discodata.eea.europa.eu). EEA data may be reused, including commercially, provided the source is acknowledged: "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)"; marked third-party content keeps its own terms. Species grain; the EUNIS id identifies a species, not a person; no contact or named-individual field is selected or emitted, no natural-person data of any kind. Reported categories as filed, not an assessment.