GBIF Alert

July 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

Django CI License: MIT

GBIF Alert is a GBIF-based early alert system for invasive species.

Visit the project website at www.gbif-alert.org for an overview, or try the official demo instance.

News

  • GBIF Alert 2.0 is here! A major release: a brand-new single-page UI, new proximity filtering (observations inside or approaching your areas), a modern public API (v2), and a fully reworked Docker/deployment stack. See the changelog.
  • 🎉 GBIF Alert was awarded the first prize of the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge 2023! 🎉

It is a reusable website engine powered by Django available under the MIT license. Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

Getting started

GBIF Alert allows you to monitor a list of species, and be notified of new occurrences on GBIF via email.

Multiple websites using GBIF alert (called instances) exists, in order to target different communities:

  • You are an end-user that just want to be informed of new occurrence in the GBIF network? Join an existing instance that covers your area and species of interest, register and start configuring your alerts! Here is a demonstration video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bixaTGRIZ4A

  • You have more technical knowledge and want to install your own instance of GBIF Alert? No problem: GBIF Alert is fully configurable, and we provide facilities to make it easy to install and deploy. See INSTALL.md for more information.

GBIF Alert instances in the wild

  • LIFE RIPARIAS Early Alert: production / development (Targets riparian invasive species in Belgium)
  • GBIF Alert demo instance (Always in sync with the devel branch of this repository)
  • The Belgian Biodiversity Platform uses GBIF alert under the hood as an API for the ManaIAS project.

API

GBIF Alert exposes a stable, supported public HTTP API (API v2) for programmatic access to its data.

Each instance documents its own API: visit /api-docs on any instance for an overview, with the interactive reference at /api/v2/docs and an OGC WFS service at /api/wfs/observations/. For example, on the demo instance: https://demo.gbif-alert.org/api-docs

The older /api/* JSON endpoints are deprecated in favour of API v2 and will be removed on 30 June 2027.