Biodiversity Audits for Whole Farm Plan

A biodiversity audit is applicable to all businesses under the Whole Farm Plan. For 2026, 2 out of the 5 Whole Farm plan items are required.

If you are looking for information on the other items within the plan, check out our Preparing for the Future webpage.

The biodiversity audit is something which farmers and crofters can easily complete themselves. The minimum requirement is to mark one habitat per field on your farm or croft along with any linear features which do not show on Ordnance Survey mapping such as hedges, lines of trees and drystone dykes. You are welcome to include more detail if you wish and include multiple habitats per field, but it is not required.

There is a key that can be downloaded from the Rural and Payments Services website which lists all the habitat groupings to allow you to see the menu from which to select your one habitat per field.

Identifying Habitats

If you are unclear what habitat you have on your farms, check out the Farm Advisory Service Habitat identification videos for support on identifying which category is the habitat on your farm.

Creating Your Habitat Map

There are multiple ways to complete the map and maps should be updated every 5 years.

To complete your map, you can:

• use the Map Viewer on Rural Payments & Services (RP&S)
• submit Habitat maps generated on your own mapping system (including shapefiles) using the RP&S Map Viewer
• provide a map completed by hand of the key habitats and linear features to the Land Mapping Team and they will upload it to LPIS on your behalf
• provide the Land Mapping Team with a list of Land Parcel Identification numbers and the habitat that best describes most of the land cover for each field/land parcel

If you use any of the bottom 3 options from that list, you need to supply your map or list directly to the Land Mapping Team mailbox at landmappingteam@gov.scot. Maps should not be uploaded to the SAF form.

Further Support

If you are looking for detailed support on how to create your habitat map on the Rural Payments and Services mapping system, check out this webinar recording.