We are looking for experienced volunteers to help monitor brown long-eared roosts in 26 counties.
The main aim of Bat Conservation Ireland is to help conserve Irish bats. In order to ensure Irish bats are being conserved it is important to know to find out how their populations are increasing, decreasing or stable. Regular monitoring is the key to picking up any declining (or increasing) trends, which are in turn, important in forming conservation policy and management on a nationwide and EU level. BCIreland manages five schemes to track trends in bat populations. All five schemes are managed under contract to the NPWS.
The annual population trend of the brown long-eared bat is assessed every year by counts at a sample of roost sites across the Republic of Ireland. Over 40 sites are counted twice between May and August. In order to derive reliable trends the same sites are counted year after year.
A combination of bat group volunteers, roost owners and BCIreland staff help carry out these counts and we need more volunteers to help cover more roost sites so that we can find out how their populations are doing.
Brown long-eared bats can be tricky to survey, so for this reason we keen to hear from experienced bat surveyors.
If you know of or even own a summer roost of brown long-eared bats we would also like to hear from you.
For more information please email: [email protected]