HISTORIC church buildings help the longer term conservation of bats, research based on a survey by the Bat Conservation Trust suggests.
Amid a discount in wildlife habitats, concerns have been expressed that laws currently protecting bats may very well be amended or removed. One in three of the 1450 confirmed bat species are listed within the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List as ‘threatened’.
An estimated 60 per cent, 8000, of the Church of England’s 12,000 legally protected churches have roosts, with architectural features reminiscent of roof and eave voids making pre-Reformation buildings essentially the most favoured. The local landscape context — proximity to water, woodland, agricultural land, hedges, and tree lines — can be found to be necessary.
The study, published on the British Ecological Society website, says: “Urban landscapes can sometimes provide islands of isolated suitable habitat amid agricultural land. We suggest that churches inside arable domain landscapes are acting as islands of roosting opportunities for the bats.”
How welcome bats are in churches is determined by the extent of any damage or disruption from their urine and droppings, the study suggests. Using data from a Bats in Churches partnership study (2019-22), the researchers sought to check perceptions that church representatives can be negative about having bats within the constructing.
It found that only ten per cent of the church communities surveyed had that negative attitude: “Bat faeces and urine, especially on holy areas reminiscent of the altar, cause distress to worshippers and result in sensitivities and concerns about bats using these buildings. Hundreds of females, large colonies and their associated excreta often mean an increased cleansing burden for a church community, which in turn can result in negative attitudes towards bats. Understanding these attitudes is an important basis for mitigating conflict arising from this burden in church communities.”
It continues: “Outreach and targeted projects involving local communities will be put in place as a difficult but often successful approach to the conservation of bat species in these necessary buildings.”
Church sampling protocol was used to pick out churches from a pool of 1275 randomly chosen churches taken from 17,839 listed within the Church Heritage record. The final level of churches surveyed was 350, and this was ascribed to lack of volunteers, insufficient responses from church contacts in some areas, or churches that were closed or whose listed data were incomplete.
The data also show that every church often houses multiple species, with a median of three bat species per church. Seventy-seven per cent of the churches where the representative knew that the bats were roosting reported that they’d known about that presence for greater than five years. In 35 per cent of the churches where evidence was found, the church contact was unaware of bat presence. A high proportion of responses from churches with none roosts were neutral or indifferent towards bats: those where disruption to services, including weddings and funerals, was experienced were less positive.
Bats were less more likely to roost in buildings that had artificial lighting around them, more specifically on the west side.
The study says: “It is essential that support is put in place to cut back conflict and to assist with cleansing and the protection of historic interiors.”
It recommends further research, including a more detailed evaluation of church features, to gauge the impact of the presence of bats, and concludes: “Churches provide necessary roosting structures for bats, especially in additional rural agricultural areas, but there are a lot of inquiries to be answered, despite the positivity of the findings.”
