LET'S MAKE SURE THAT OUR VOICE IS HEARD – DEADLINE 26TH JULY 2015

The public consultation phase of the European Commission's "fitness check" review of the Birds and Habitats Directives comes to an end on Friday 26 July. It is vital that as many people as possible make their voices heard in order to protect this important legislation. Bat Conservation Trust has been working in parallel with many other conservation and environmental charities across the UK and Europe in calling for our supporters to respond to the consultation. Over 370,000 people across Europe have already taken up this call - the biggest public consultation response that the EU has ever had. We need a final push to make sure our collective views are clearly heard.

The Directives provide the cornerstone of EU conservation legislation and are an essential mechanism for safeguarding vulnerable species and habitats whilst ensuring social and economic needs are met. Diluting this legislation will certainly harm bats and other wildlife. It's important to remember that this legislation not only protects UK bats, but also protects a total of 53 threatened bat species found across Europe, which would be at much greater risk without this legal protection.

Bat Conservation Trust has submitted a detailed response to the public consultation and this can be downloaded here.

We need you to defend nature by submitting either one of the two consultation questionnaires shown below. Then please encourage all friends and family to do the same. Use #defendnature on twitter to show your support.

Short questionnaire: For a completed survey for you to use, with answers which best support nature, please click here: www.naturealert.eu/en

More technical questionnaire: The full EU questionnaire can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/EUNatureDirectives