🌲🦇 🌲 Woodland Roosts🌲🦇 🌲 – CSA Environmental Ecologists Nancy Inman, Jodie Van Gramberg and Lucy Moorhouse recently enjoyed attending the Bat Conservation Trust’s National Bat Conference reporting back on attending interesting workshops on the woodland roost resource concept, bats in landscaping and bat call analysis.
Particularly of interest was the ‘Understanding and applying the woodland roost concept’ talk from Dr Ian Davidson-Watts, who we have worked with on various projects over the years.
Useful points on woodland roosts:
🦇Areas of woodland can provide roost sites for some of our rarest bat species, such as Bechstein’s, Barbastelle and Natterer’s bats.
🦇Bats have been found to transition between roosts in response to shifts in environmental conditions throughout the year, even during periods of hibernation. This means that ‘traditional surveys’ (e.g. focused monitoring / roost emergence surveys) may miss roosts that form part of a roost complex.
🦇The woodland roost resource concept helps us understand the importance of not just individual features within trees for supporting roosting bats, but the entire woodland habitat as a whole.
🦇Research on how bats are using woodland habitats, has helped inform new approaches to woodland habitat resource assessment and ways of identifying important roost sites. The use of ‘Advanced Level Bat Survey Techniques (ALBST) is being promoted under the ‘new’ (September 2023) BCT Bat Survey guidelines, where impacts to larger areas of woodland are anticipated. ALBST techniques such as trapping and radio-tagging can help to identify species and roost sites across larger areas of woodland. We can apply this knowledge to projects when evaluating the importance of woodland habitats, and to inform appropriate mitigation and enhancements.
Information on our bat survey services can be found here