Saturday 25 March 2017

Talks

Natural England is only one of several organisations across the country working to take care of the environment. As well as the Broads Authority and the Wildlife Trust there are independent ecological consultants as well. In our local area representatives of these groups and others regularly get together to form the Broads Biodiversity Partnership, where we listen to talks given by members on the work that they've been doing. It's an important way of keeping up to date with local projects and share expertise; it was here I was told about the PlantLife publication on eutrophication, the issue affecting Hoveton Great Broad.

The meeting started with a talk by a ecological consultant about fen monitoring, research and management - why it's important and how it can be done. He described surveillance monitoring as continuous work to identify long-term changes and requires permanent plots - somewhere you can return to exactly to reduce variation - with stratified coverage of the variation of vegetation and microhabitats in the area - this often requires collaboration between groups so that all bases are covered. Some variables can change very quickly, even weekly, which means monitoring like this should be done on a fortnightly basis; which requires a lot of work and, on top of all their other work, wouldn't be feasible without volunteers and collaboration.

Fens are a key habitat we're trying to recreate on our broad - if you compare Hoveton Great Broad with other water bodies in the area you can clearly see the difference in the amount of reed bed - but they haven't been well studied, simply because the spotlight has been on other habitats and few have considered researching it. Not to mention being a wetland habitat they can be a little more challenging to work in. But with conservation work going on in and around them, and the increasing affects of climate change we need to understand what a fen is besides a marshy, lowland area, how species depend on them and what impacts our work could have on them. Nothing lives in isolation and this is true of biomes more than anything else. Conservation can't be narrow minded, only focusing on the plot of land in front of them, because work in one area will inevitably impact adjacent and downstream habitats. Identifying the need for more understanding is a first step, hopefully next will be the research.

The day after, the Bat Conservation Trust held an update talk on their Bats in Churches Project. For daytime roosting bats rely on old church buildings because there are few natural habitats in the form of ancient woodland left due to logging and the felling of dangerous, hollow trees. Bats are driven out of other potentially suitable habitats due to nearby developments producing too much light and conversions of buildings such as barns into modern housing. Churches are ideal as they remain unchanged for many years so can be used by several generations of bats and the beams, timbers, nooks and crannies provide good perches.

But bat colonies, especially large maternity roosts, can make problems for the people who use the church. The main issue comes from their droppings which are not only unhygienic but also quite acidic so damage the brass and polished wood found in the church. This damage done to the building and artefacts needs to be repaired but often churches have to rely on money they raise themselves from donations - bids for grants are often unsuccessful because the chance of the repairs simply being damaged again is too high. Some congregations try to employ methods of getting rid of the bats such as floodlighting or acoustic deterrents but these are very dangerous to the bats as the light can confuse them so they don't leave the roosts at night and starve, and the noises emitted are usually very loud and painful. In other instances people try blocking the entrances that bats use in the hope that they'll move elsewhere, these are either ineffective since the bats push the blockades aside to return home or trap bats inside the building until they die.

All species of bat are protected in the UK, so it is a criminal offence to disturb or obstruct bat roosts. and we have to remember that it's us encroaching on the lives of wildlife not the other way around. As much as bat roosts do cause problems for the churches they inhabit it is their home and there are ways people can coexist. The Bats in Churches project is working to not only help churches achieve this but also to engage the congregation and change attitudes towards these mammals; they are incredible, fascinating creatures and nothing can compare to the experience of watching them fly around you. Bats are one of my favourite animals and I am very excited about this project, what it's already achieved and what it can still do for many other churches.

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