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The British Bat Survey (BBatS) and NightWatch are two citizen science surveys run by the Bat Conservation Trust which are making use of cutting-edge acoustic and AI technology to increase our understanding of bats across Great Britain. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is the use of passive acoustic recorders to record sounds in the surrounding environment, including those made by animals, weather, humans, and machines. PAM has rapidly become a widely used tool in ecology and conservation, enabling the collection of valuable biodiversity information at increasingly broad spatial and temporal scales.
The BBatS project which was funded by Joint Nature Conservation Committee is part of the National Bat Monitoring Programme (NBMP) and volunteers place AudioMoth bat detectors out across the UK in suitable habitats as part of the long term monitoring BCT volunteers undertake. The NightWatch Project was funded by Esmee Fairburn Foundation and was more focused on getting people in urban areas who would not otherwise engage in wildlife conservation involved in citizen science and bat surveying. We also made some cool resources through the NightWatch project which you can see here!
By deploying these bat detectors into the field for a certain length of time, volunteers are assisting in large scale monitoring of bats in Great Britain. Furthermore, these detectors are a non-invasive and affordable way to collect large quantities of data and can provide many insights for bat conservation. I loved working as part of the BCT Science Team and helping bring BBatS to its final launch stage. I also got to learn about and contribute to the Sound Classification System which you can learn more about here in an interview by Dr Lia Gilmour.
