Condatis bottlenecks data is published

Condatis data to support connectivity in Local Nature Recovery Strategies

Do you need guidance on the best places to propose for habitat restoration? The Condatis project has produced data that will be helpful for informing Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS; maps below). These strategies need to identify areas that could become of particular importance for biodiversity, i.e. areas where ecological restoration should be focussed. Practitioners have not had to make such concrete restoration suggestions in the past. Since one of the key goals of restoration is to increase connectivity between existing habitat areas, evidence from Condatis can support these decisions, as part of the LNRS mapping process.

Condatis bottlenecks data – what is it?

  • Bottlenecks are significant gaps between habitat patches, that limit the movement of species through landscapes, affecting species’ ability to respond to environmental changes, such as climate change.
  • Around a bottleneck is an important ‘search area’ for restoration opportunities (see maps below). If on the ground factors allow for restoration in these areas, local restoration could have a nationally significant effect on connectivity.
  • Condatis is the only tool available that can highlight gaps in this way.
  • The data layers were produced in collaboration with Natural England, and we used practitioner focus groups to get feedback on their usability.
Maps of nationally important bottleneck search zones for four broad habitats in England
These maps show bottlenecks in the networks of four broad habitat types (habitat data came from the Natural England Priority Habitats Inventory v.3.0). There are most bottlenecks in the midlands, due to lack of seminatural habitat combined with its ‘crossroads’ location. The zones in total cover a large area, but alleviating the bottleneck doesn’t require restoring the whole zone. Note it is essential to further filter Condatis-based search areas with information about restoration feasibility. During an LNRS drafting process, for example, we imagine this can readily be done by a team with knowledge of the local landscape, during ‘Step 5’ (See LNRS guidance Fig. 2).

Data access and further reading

The spatial data, and an in-depth user guide, are published on Harvard Dataverse, and are free to use under an Open Government License (Crediting Hodgson et al 2024, follow DOI https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VI7HXP). If possible we will also add them to the official LNRS data viewer.

A full discussion of our approach, together with some local case studies, is published in a Natural England Commissioned Report.


The data we’ve published for broad habitat networks is designed to be useful across England. However, Condatis could be run by LNRS teams with different settings, specific to priority species, or habitats in the local area. A GIS literate person is required, and training can be taken in less than 1 day (start with training materials here).


This project was funded by Natural England (commissioned by Humphrey Crick, Humphrey.crick@naturalengland.org.uk). Dr Jenny Hodson created Condatis and led this project, and is available to contact for more information (jenny.hodgson@liverpool.ac.uk).