The West Sussex Bat Project focuses on an area of Sussex that contains three Special Areas of Conservation (SAC). This project aims to restore and improve the conservation status of Annex II bats in the project area. Specifically it will focus on barbastelle and Bechstein’s bats, as well as greater horseshoe bats.
The map to the left highlights the area covered by the project (circled in grey). This stretches south from Dunsfold to beyond Kingley Vale, encompassing significant areas of the South Downs including Petworth, Ebernoe Common, and The Mens.
Existing data gathered in the area includes maternity colonies of both Bechsteins and barbastelle, with some knowledge of a small greater horseshoe population. Building on this research, we hope to learn more about some known colonies, and hopefully discover more in the area.
This project will feed into a funding application for habitat improvement within the project area, including the planting of hedgerows to increase habitat connectivity.
Posts relating to the West Sussex Bat Project:
New Sussex Barbastelle Colony – August 2015
Great night tonight, we had only one volunteer come out to give us a hand with the work, but, we have found a new Barbastelle maternity colony in Sussex. There are at least 58 individuals although some of the smaller juveniles are still staying in the roost. We caught 29 emerge which were all quickly […]
Barbastelle in houses…
Here is one of our tagged Barbastelle bats we have been tracking roosting under a tile. Thanks to Xenia Snowman for the photo and helping with the project, if anyone wants to come and see some Barbs and help with the project we have a basecamp available all next week. Just email us to let […]
Alcathoe
No Barbs in the catch tonight, but amongst what we did catch was an impressive 12 Alcathoe at one site, the most common bat caught!
Sussex Barbastelle Trapping – 4th to 10th May 2015
We are arranging a week of trapping at the beginning of May in order to gather as much data as possible before the maternity season begins for this year. The information gathered from this session will feed into the West Sussex Bat Project. The National Trust have offered us the Slindon Basecamp to use for a week for […]