South East of England Bat Conference

Date of next conference: 21 November 2020 - save the date!

The South East of England Bat Conference is an opportunity for volunteer and professional bat workers in the South East to spend time together: updating their knowledge, sharing best practice, developing their skills and catching up on the latest 'bat chat'. The day will include spotlight talks from various bat groups in the region, longer talks on projects or sharing new knowledge and a choice of practical workshops. There will also be plenty of time for catching up with batty friends or making some new batty acquaintances.

This one-day event is primarily for bat workers and bat enthusiasts who live, work, or are members of bat groups in the South East of England and the Channel Islands. The area covered is: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Greater London, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey, Sussex and the Channel Islands.

The previous South East of England Bat Conference took place on 10th November 2018 at Ark Conference Centre in Basingstoke, Hampshire.

You can find highlights from the day on Twitter using #SEBatConf

The talks programme included:

• An update on the work of the Bat Conservation Trust - Joe Nunez-Mino, Director of Fundraising and Communications, BCT
• New approaches to assessing the role of competition in shaping bat species ranges – Roberto Fernandez Novella, University of Southampton
• What High Definition Thermal Imaging Reveals About Bats – Ian Baker, Hampshire Bat Group
• The Jersey Bat Survey: a comparison of static and transect based approaches to acoustic monitoring – Henry Glynn, University College London
• Comparing new compensation roosts: an update on BCT’s Bat Mitigation Project – Andy Ross, BCT
• Establishing barriers to bats: the combined power of artificial light and sound – Jack Merrifield, University of Southampton
• Priorities for Bat Conservation in the South East - Discussion session chaired by Ani Binet, BCT Trustee

Five minute bat group spotlight sessions were scheduled between the main talks during the day and there was a choice of workshops including:

• Advanced Sound Analysis
• Introduction to Kaleidoscope Viewer
• Introduction to Bat Identification
• Data Protection - what it is and why you should care
• Safeguarding for Bat Groups
• Introduction to QGIS for Bat Groups
• Sonobat 4 (UK Version)
• Introduction to Titley Scientific Products

The conference was sponsored by Wildlife Acoustics.