North of England Bat Conference

This year, the Durham Bat Group are hosting a Northern Bat Workers Conference on 20th March at St. Aidans College, Durham University.   The conference is targeted primarily at bat workers down to the Humber and across to Cumbria but if other batworkers from wider afield are interested they would be made most welcome.

Programme and booking form.  For further details of this event, please contact Noel Jackson, Durham Bat Group, at noelbats@onetel.com.

The North of England Bat Conference was the first of BCT's pilot regional conferences.    The event was held at Leeds Trinity and All Saints College on 21st March 2009.

All 122 places were snapped up within weeks, and unfortunately we couldn't meet the high demand for places.   Highlights from the day included some excellent presentations from Emma Rigby and Chris Scott on their doctorate research at the University of Leeds, and an insight into the exciting developments of the River Colne Project; a volunteer engagement project run by River Colne Project Officer, Mick Smith, in partnership with the West Yorkshire Bat Group.

Lancashire trainer, Pat Waring, gave a high energy and thought-provoking talk on Urban Bats and mitigation, before running a workshop on this theme in the afternoon.  Pat's workshop generated a list of urban bat species known (by attendees) in the north of England.  This list comprised:

• Brown long-eared
• Leisler's
• Noctule
• Daubenton's
• Natterer's
• Whiskered
• Common pipistrelle
• Soprano pipistrelle
• Brandt's

Attendees also had the chance to comment and further develop West Yorkshire Ecology 's (WYE) Bat Alert Layer in a workshop run by Robert Masheder (Senior Ecologist, WYE); the Bat Alert Layer is a map that highlights areas where there is a ‘reasonable likelihood' of bats being present, based on the "Bat Surveys - Good Practice Guidelines" Bat Conservation Trust (2007).

And last, but by no means least, local bat carer Maggie Brown gave a talk and follow-up workshop on a new bat care scheme initiated by the West Yorkshire Bat Group.  The group's scheme has generated lots of new interest by making the most of links bewteen bat care training, existing bat group programme activities, and roost visitor training.

For more information about the day, download the abstracts and workshop notes. 
Phil Briggs' presentation on the NBMP in the North of England is also available to view in full.

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