Migration Zone Shapefiles

Migration Zone Shapefiles

This page provides shapefiles for all of the species migration zone maps used in the SOSS-05 report on assessing the risk of offshore wind farm development to migratory birds designated as features of UK Special Protection Areas (and other Annex 1 species). 

If you are using the SOSS Migration Assessment Tool you should not need to use these files, unless you wish to update the migration zone for a particular species if new information has become available. However, you may wish to use these shapefiles if you are using an alternative assessment method, or for the purpose of creating any illustrations you may wish to include in reports.

There are options to download either a single large zip file containing shapefiles for all species, or to download individual files for each species or population. Please note that many species have more than one map (e.g. for breeding and non-breeding populations, or for different races or recognised geographical populations). 

Please ensure you download the shapefiles for the relevant population of interest, and bear in mind that you may need to consider more than one race or sub-population for some species (e.g. for non-breeding redshank you would need to consider all three races for which we have made shapefiles). 

It should be noted that migration zone boundaries that are very distant from the UK (e.g. in the mid-Atlantic) are often arbitrary, as the report focussed on where species might cross the seas around the UK, not their entire migration. Further guidance on these issues is given in the SOSS-05 report.

Shapefiles to download

All species

Auks

Corncrake and coot

Ducks

Divers

Geese

Grebes

Gulls

Herons and egrets

Owls, nightjar and passerines

Raptors

Shearwaters, petrels, gannet and cormorants

Skuas

Swans

Terns

Waders

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