Bats & Buildings

Over 150 bat licences obtained for works to various buildings containing bats.

A large part of our work involves bat surveys of buildings requiring alteration, demolition, restoration or conversion. This generally involves daytime inspections and bat emergence surveys at dusk or dawn to gain an understanding of bat-use. Richard Green Ecology has successfully obtained over 150 European protected species licences to enable work to bat roosts. This involves design and implementation of bat mitigation measures, including providing replacement bat roosts and subsequent monitoring.

Richard Green Ecology has successfully advised on several National Trust building repair projects, proven by the return of breeding bats, in some cases, in greater numbers than before work was undertaken. At Lower Brownsham, in North Devon, bat access slates and ridge tiles were incorporated into the roof replacement over the house during the winter of 2014/2015. In summer 2015, common and soprano pipistrelle, brown long-eared and serotine bats had all returned to roost in the roof of the building, and over 200 soprano pipistrelles were recorded breeding in the roof in 2017, compared to only 17 recorded in 2014.

Brown long-eared bat maternity roosts are notoriously difficult to replace successfully. At Blagdon Hill, where an existing house used by breeding brown long-eared bats was demolished before building a new house, we restored a former outbuilding as a bat roost. A natural slate roof was provided and roof timbers from the house that were stained by oil from the bats’ fur were fixed inside/under the roof, in the hope that the smell would attract bats to the new roost. Brown long-eared bats started breeding in the outbuilding in the summer following the demolition of the house, after careful dismantling of the roof in the winter, to ensure no bats were injured.

We undertake bat surveys across the south west, including Barnstaple, Bath, Bodmin, Bridgwater, Bristol, Falmouth, Exeter, Hayle, Holsworthy, Launceston, Okehampton, Minehead, Newquay, Newton Abbot, Plymouth, South Molton, Taunton, Tiverton, Truro, Wareham, Weston-super-Mare, Yeovil, and many other locations.