diff --git a/sklearn/datasets/_species_distributions.py b/sklearn/datasets/_species_distributions.py
index 091708e6f8ee4..2aa7caab403c8 100644
--- a/sklearn/datasets/_species_distributions.py
+++ b/sklearn/datasets/_species_distributions.py
@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@
 from ._base import RemoteFileMetadata
 from ..utils import Bunch
 from ._base import _pkl_filepath
+from ..utils._param_validation import validate_params
 
 # The original data can be found at:
 # https://biodiversityinformatics.amnh.org/open_source/maxent/samples.zip
@@ -137,6 +138,7 @@ def construct_grids(batch):
     return (xgrid, ygrid)
 
 
+@validate_params({"data_home": [str, None], "download_if_missing": ["boolean"]})
 def fetch_species_distributions(*, data_home=None, download_if_missing=True):
     """Loader for species distribution dataset from Phillips et. al. (2006).
 
diff --git a/sklearn/tests/test_public_functions.py b/sklearn/tests/test_public_functions.py
index 1f3966890344e..0266de650b41e 100644
--- a/sklearn/tests/test_public_functions.py
+++ b/sklearn/tests/test_public_functions.py
@@ -128,6 +128,7 @@ def _check_function_param_validation(
     "sklearn.datasets.fetch_lfw_people",
     "sklearn.datasets.fetch_olivetti_faces",
     "sklearn.datasets.fetch_rcv1",
+    "sklearn.datasets.fetch_species_distributions",
     "sklearn.datasets.load_breast_cancer",
     "sklearn.datasets.load_diabetes",
     "sklearn.datasets.load_iris",