GBIF Flagship Species Occurrences
Quick answer: A hosted GBIF extract covering 4,354 occurrences of six flagship species across 51 countries, filtered to CC0 / CC BY records so it is commercially usable, with an instant map and per-species, per-country, per-year summary.
About this dataset
4,354 georeferenced observations for six flagship species — giant panda, tiger, African bush elephant, blue whale, golden eagle, and monarch butterfly — pulled from GBIF and filtered to licences that allow commercial reuse.
GBIF aggregates species occurrence records from museums, survey programmes, and citizen-science platforms worldwide. This dataset extracts six well-known species (giant panda, tiger, African bush elephant, blue whale, golden eagle, monarch butterfly) into a compact point layer: 4,354 observations across 51 countries spanning 1929–2026. Every record keeps its species, country, year, basis of record, and licence, while non-commercial (CC BY-NC) and no-derivatives records are excluded so the file is safe for commercial use. The map above renders it directly and the summary below breaks it down by species, country, and year.
How to download
- 1 Explore the hosted layer above — the map and summary load the combined file directly.
- 2 Download a single species file when you only need one distribution.
- 3 For other taxa, query the GBIF occurrence search and filter by licence (CC0 / CC BY) before using commercially.
- 4 Join observations with land cover, elevation, or climate layers to model habitat.
Hosted combined GeoJSON (map preview above)
All six species, ~1.2 MB
Giant panda (29 records)
Tiger (1,046 records)
African bush elephant (167 records)
Blue whale (1,302 records)
Golden eagle (1,591 records)
Monarch butterfly (219 records)
GBIF occurrence search
Query any taxon by country, year, or dataset
GBIF download API
Predicate-based asynchronous downloads for large extracts
FAQ
Where do these observations come from?
Every point is a GBIF occurrence record — museum specimens, survey datasets, and citizen-science platforms such as iNaturalist — aggregated by GBIF and filtered here to records that permit commercial reuse.
Can I use this dataset commercially?
Yes. Records licensed CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND were removed, leaving CC0 1.0 and CC BY 4.0 observations. Keep the attribution to GBIF and the original data publishers when you republish.
Why do some species have far fewer points?
Sampling effort is uneven. The giant panda has only 29 usable records with open coordinates after filtering, while the golden eagle has 1,591. Absence of points never means absence of the species.
How current is the data?
The extract covers observations through 2026 and is rebuilt from GBIF's weekly crawl when refreshed; each feature keeps its observation year so you can filter to recent decades.