Nocturnal mammals and climate change
Hedgehog (Credit: Emily Marnham/PTES)
Climate change is a major threat to species worldwide, but we still know little about how nocturnal mammals are being impacted. Connecting People and Landscapes aims to understand the vulnerability of the UK’s nocturnal mammals to climate change. We want to identify the species under highest threat from climate change and use this to inform landscape-scale management across the UK’s agricultural landscape.
Working in partnership with Peoples Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and University of Exeter, the Bat Conservation Trust will be looking at long-term data that will enable us to assess changes in morphology and phenology over the past few decades and address these important questions. Exploring data from PTES National Dormouse Monitoring Scheme and Big Hedgehog Map.
The project is asking wildlife rehabilitators who have access to unique records to help by sharing any information they have with us:
We are interested in how bat measurements and phenology have changed in the past few years or decades in response to climate change and whether bats are ending up in care as a result of changes in climate or unusual climatic events. Records collected as part of care and rehabilitation programmes as well as trapping and box checks are a valuable source of information on long-term responses to climate change that is not available in published literature.
We specifically, we need records on bats that have been rescued and have been in or are currently in your care or from bat box checking or trapping programmes. Although we are particularly interested in long-term records collected over the past few years, or even decades. Any records you have would be very helpful as all records provided will be pulled together to identify long-term trends.
For more information click here.
Climate predictions show that the UK may become a stronghold for many continental European species as parts of their range warm and potentially become unsuitable, while warming conditions in the UK are predicted to make the UK more suitable for warm adapted species currently not found here. We need to act now to guide effective landscape scale action to improve habitats for all species.
