Sarah Yarwood-Lovett took a team of ecologists to relocate bats in Essex.

“This month our bat ecologists completed their site involvement at the Edge Hotel at the University of Essex. Following surveys for bats we found that pipistrelle and brown long-eared bats were roosting in a 1980's extension, scheduled for demolition, of the listed Georgian house. We were able to design mitigation by adapting a nearby building to be a suitable roost for both bat species, after we obtained a licence from Natural England. The site works could then go ahead. For this, we needed to set up exclusion devices to enable bats to leave but not re-enter the building, and we monitored this exercise. Once the bats were confirmed to be successfully excluded from the building, we could supervise the soft-strip of the roof materials from a variety of vantage points, using cherry pickers, boom lifts, fork lifts and scaffolding, to check that no bats remained under tiles or roofing felt. We were careful to phase this around the birds nesting in the soffit boxes of the building so that they were not disturbed until young had fledged. Once the supervised soft-strip was completed, we were able to give the all-clear for demolition to take place, with no risk to bats”.

Mitigation and translocation services at Ecology consultancy

Fox family at Saltdean

Our Lewes team has been monitoring an old badger sett in a residential garden in Saltdean, East Sussex, after the client had reported hearing some animal activity in the garden. A series of monitoring visits was carried out and included the installation of a motion-activated camera set to record any animal activity.

The device attracted some unwanted attention by two people trying to steal it, who were, of course, caught on camera in the process! They were unsuccessful and the camera was used to record footage of a family of foxes who had taken up residence in the old sett. There were at least four young cubs and one adult - the cubs particularly enjoyed playing on the path right in front of the camera.