Knepp Rewilding Estate

S3E34 Hidden amongst the boughs of an Oak tree, Steve & his guests look down over the Knepp Castle Rewilding Estate; former farmland which has been allowed to return to nature by the owners Isabella Tree & Charlie Burrell. In this episode, as the sun sets the light turns golden. Below us red deer begin to bellow at the start of the rutting season, a green woodpecker calls out from amongst the tussocky grassland and bats begin to flit about the Oak canopy they're stood in. Our guests in this final episode of season 3 are Ryan Greaves and Stephanie Murphy. Ryan tells us more about the Estate and Steph explains how bat surveys have evolved over the years.

• Follow Ryan and Steph on Instagram
• Follow Knepp on twitter and Instagram
• Find out more about the greater horseshoes in Sussex
• Get more audio from Knepp by having a listen to their podcast
• Get the history of the Knepp Rewilding project here
• The bestselling book Wilding by Isabella Tree can be bought here

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Transcript

Steve Roe: 0:54

A warm welcome to the final episode of Series Three. This week's episode comes to you on location from the Knepp rewilding estate in West Sussex. I'm Steve Roe, a BCT Trustee. Welcome to BatChat, the podcast from the Bat Conservation Trust. Yes, the end of another series is upon us, but series four is already in the making. And there's more information on that and how to get involved at the end of the show. So this episode, as I said, comes to you from the famous Knepp Estate in Sussex. I remember reading about Knepp for the first time in a British Wildlife Magazine article back in 2016, but had no idea of the successful story it would become. We join our guests Ryan Greaves and Stephanie Murphy on an October's evening last year, we're located in what's known as the middle block of the states. We stood in a tree house halfway up an oak tree amongst its bows. As the sunsets the landscape starts to turn golden. Red Deer in the field below are starting their rut. A green woodpecker calls out in the fading light and unheard on the audio, bats begin to dance around the canopy of the Oak that we're stood in recording this episode. So it's the start of October. Autumn's finally here, and I'm stood in a tree house next to an oak tree with Ryan Greaves and Stephanie Murphy on the Knepp Rewilding Estate. Thanks very much for coming on the show. Do you just want to tell the listeners what your role is here at Knepp?

Ryan Greaves: 2:46

My name is Ryan. I'm now one of the safari guides here. I'm sort of known as the main bat person on the estate. But I also get involved in some of the education visits and some of the reptile surveys and other bird surveys and general wildlife surveys on the state.

Stephanie Murphy: 3:03

Hi, my name is Steph Murphy. And my role in the state is predominantly to be updating bat surveys, particularly around advanced trapping surveys that have been undertaken to measure how the state has changed. And the bat diversity has changed over a number of years. I've been working in partnership with Ryan. And we often tie the surveys into when we're doing other types of surveys such as moths, surveys, and the bat walks for the safari attendees.

Steve Roe: 3:35

So you're doing all these different surveys, how often are you guys on the Estate?

Ryan Greaves: 3:39

I'm lucky enough to live on the estate. My other half runs the sort of campsite business. So I'm one of the lucky ones whose Knepp is my doorstep.

Steve Roe: 3:49

And you surveying just that. So a bit of everything. Yeah, so

Ryan Greaves: 3:52

I am part of the sort of general surveying team. So I do a lot of reptile and amphibian surveys, bird surveys, moth surveys, and just general recording. And when we're leading sort of Safari groups and an education visits, we're out recording all the time.

Steve Roe: 4:11

Great stuff. So for listeners who don't know anything about that, can you sum up its history for us.

Unknown: 4:18

It's an estate that was in sort of owned by certain family for generations. And they ran it for many generations, in traditional sort of West Sussex farming style with a bit of sort of cattle breeding and trying to grow arable and a bit of dairy. And yeah, for many generations, with sort of, in a similar style to the rest of the the local estates. So it was inherited by Charlie Burrell, who now is the main owner of the estate. And he tried for many years sort of maximise its profitability in terms of trying dairy farming, arable planting stuff. But the estate is on a sort of heavy clay, which makes it really hard for growing anything. It's not great farming land. And it's really hard for getting machinery out and that kind of thing. So they ran it for many years and making a loss. And then a chap called Ted Green, who sort of an ancient tree expert came to visit the estate sort of look at some of the big oak trees that were still standing whilst the rest of the land was being farmed to the nth degree. And he said, Have you heard about this rewilding idea, which has mainly been taking off in the Netherlands at the time. So he said you could go and visit a project over there. And there's a site called Oostvaardersplassen, which is sort of reclaimed from the sea, sort of a big sort of ranching where you've got free roaming cattle and ponies, and it's become an amazing sort of biodiversity hotspot. And so yeah, they they went over there and were greatly inspired and thought maybe we could try this. Try this in Sussex, I think feedback of the a bit on that rewilding journey since 2001.

Steve Roe: 5:59

Nice. I'm glad you pronounced Oostvaardersplassen because I was terrified about saying it. And I mean, we're, we're studying nature and we can read this texts, starting the rest of the autumn, can you for listeners who may have read about these states in Isabella's book or have read about it in the press? Can you just try and take listeners on a audio journey of what it sort of looks and feels like to walk through the state as it is today?

Ryan Greaves: 6:23

Sure. So it's in sort of three main sections sort of separated by roads. And those sort of equals in the southern block the middle block in the northern bluff, they've all got perimeter fences, but the northern block is sort of a sort of wetland open, sort of, sort of pasture II type. So I've got the Longhorn cattle moving through there. But it's mostly sort of pasture and a bit of wet areas, the middle block, is looks sort of like almost like your traditional Deer Park, but it's becoming more and more wild. And then the southern block of the estate is a really interesting place that we call the wild land. So when the rewilding started, it was still still being in the sort of agricultural planting stage, trying to grow things arable, are really and they didn't have the money to put the fencing in to put the grazing animals in. So they took all the fields out of production over a course of about six years. And then during those six years, there's nothing to graze it. So all the vegetation sort of pulsed out and the kind of all the seeds in the hedges sort of spread into the middle of the field, and you start to get young trees and lots of scrub to grow up. So the southern block looks kind of quite African very scrubby. And each each field is kind of its own sort of mosaic of different types of habitat. And, and, and the animals sort of move quite freely through the estate. So you've got Longhorn cattle, which I mentioned before, you mentioned the red deer. We've also got herds of fallow deer, and we've also got x more ponies, sort of wild ponies, and Tamworth pigs. So there's sort of a range of grazing and browsing styles. And they Yeah, they're, they're free to move however they want through the estate, and they kind of are the drivers for the rewilding project. So it's quite a dynamic, what we call it used to be a mosaic. And that's a kaleidoscope of habitats.

Steve Roe: 8:13

And in walking through from where we've parked the cars and walking on to this bed, feels very nice about slowly walking along the footpath. It's like, oh, there's got to be better stuff. Was there ever a baseline survey done? If that's before the project happened? Yeah,

Unknown: 8:27

there was actually Frank Greenaway, who's was probably the first known barbastelle expert really in the UK, he did survey here in 2008. And Frank had recorded so the Mens is not too far from from here. So there was no barbastelle colonies kind of long. But he did a baseline survey in 2008. He found a good number of species, but not but kind of more your typical species, um, high numbers of common purpose trails. Brown long-eared's, Natterer's. He recorded barbastelles on bat detectors, but didn't catch them didn't capture any Bechstein's. So he was doing remote monitoring with automated bat detectors. Far less probably advanced as the ones that are now and and he was also doing tracking surveys. So he had a mixture of both. And he'd done it over all around this these days, where they planned to do change to the river restoration in the woodland mosaic area. So it was all targeted at the areas which are proposed to change. So and in some areas that Frank said, these are good for bats, as well. So so there was a baseline survey done by by Frank in 2008. And so there was whiskered bats. Brandt's I believe were recorded. And and then there was noctules, serotines on the detectors as well. And I think that was about about it's it's like seven or eight species recorded.

Steve Roe: 10:09

And do we know how that populations have changed in that time?

Ryan Greaves: 10:12

As far as we know. So 2008 would have been sort of seven years into the rewilding, as far as you know, before that there was only been five species recorded on the estate. So we're now up to 13. Which is pretty good, good going. And yeah, we're from your site based on your surveys. We're seeing sort of more female that's using the site and perhaps more maternity roost and more breeding activity on this day, which is very encouraging.

Unknown: 10:41

And we identified in 2018 maternity colony of Bechstein's on this date for the first time, which is in a woodpecker hole, which is fantastic. So there's a colleague count of About 31 bats, which is, which is fantastic. And there's numbers of soprano pips, oh huge, huge colonies soprano pips in both houses, trees. So a real Yeah. And and a barbastelle bat, albeit a male but but roost roosted on in one of the wooden box blocks on the Moors to the south of southern block in the mosaic area in 22,018 as well. So yeah, so that was it was what overall the numbers of species have increased? It's very difficult to say the number of bats have increased because that passes you know the the inherent bias of recording you don't know if one bat flew past 10 times or you know, there's 10 bass passing ones, but fair to say there's definitely more females. And Ryan's been picking up a lot of Ryan deals with a lot of the people that live on the estate that deal with the bats and the properties. And I think there are pretty much bats in the majority of the properties on the state certainly. So a lot of the buildings where people are living or working are now sort of used for for businesses used as bit office space, but they're still pretty hotspots for bats. And most of the old farm buildings do have brown long-eared's and pipistrelle. Certainly and quite a few of them have whiskered houses that we have is that most local church I think the local windmills got that through thinking there's a very large soprano of Colony just just just right yeah, so that's, that's part of the sort of National Bat Monitoring Roost colony counts that we do every year and I've been doing it for about four years and it's gone from sort of I think it was 80 or 90 to over 300 coming out every night so that's a good sign.

Steve Roe: 12:52

So there's two of you so between you should be able to list all 13 species go for it.

Unknown: 12:59

Okay, soprano pipistrelle, common pipistrelle. Nathusius' pipistrelle roosting on the estate in a house. serotine, noctule, through I think Leisler's was picked up whiskered,

Stephanie Murphy: 13:16

Brandt's

Ryan Greaves: 13:19

Daubenton's, Natterer's, Bechstein's, barbastelles,

Stephanie Murphy: 13:25

brown long-eared,

Steve Roe: 13:27

so as the estate's changed and the new habitats have come through, have you got any ideas of which of the new habitat seem to be best for bats either foraging or and or roosting?

Unknown: 13:37

Yeah, I mean, the one I mean, what's amazing is the mill pond and hammer pond. Both of those are fantastic sites. We've there's a roost just over the Mill Pond across from where we standing, I think there's 70 odd Daubenton's that was in a tree and watching them swoop over over the pond is quite quite a sight. It's in addition to the soprano poops, it's it can be it sounds like mayhem on the back detectors. So that's that's, that's really nice of the the riparian habitats are definitely better. It's hard to know what it was like before.

Ryan Greaves: 14:16

Yeah, so I guess the sort of large water bodies and the woodland around that are probably the well established habitats, but now you've got the kind of scrubland and all the kinds of nectar sources. And so the lands not got any pesticides sprayed on it anymore. The hedges are no longer sort of flailed. And they're sort of swelling out. And the planes are being reinstated. There's a lot more water on the estate. And so hopefully, everything's just a bit more well connected.

Unknown: 14:44

Yeah, there was definitely in comparison to the

Stephanie Murphy: 14:44

And you mentioned the surveys during study in 2008. There was definitely a lot more bats there. So what sort of methods are you using now to survey bats caught on the floodplain than there were in Yeah, in the original study. And it's quite difficult to catch back to the on this day? floodplain because it's quite open habitat. But we were

Unknown: 15:06

Well, this was a specific project where we definitely hearing a lot more back passes. So So allow it I guess, it was mostly soprano, pipistrelles, but I guess allowing those bats who disperse allows for other bats to move in and make use of, of the other habitat that's available within these days. measured the baseline and then we repeated exactly the methods that that Frank did so we had like a like for like comparison last year, so that those the surveys methods were transacts leaving out automated static detectors, and doing trapping and radio tracking, and then doing risk counts of of the. So the bats that we really attract. For those who aren't familiar with radio tracking, it's we catch bat in either Mist nets or harp traps, we attach a transmitter to the bat, and that enables us in the daytime to find the frequency of that transmitter and locate it roost. And if we're lucky enough, it'll be in a nice, visible woodpecker hole from the ground level, and we can count them out. If we're unlucky, it will be from ground level in somewhere in the canopy that we can't see from ground ground level. And we just have to make a best estimate. We film them on infrared cameras and thermal imaging coming out of the wrist so we can get accurate risk counts, because obviously, it's quite difficult at night to see everything coming out of the trees. And so you can look back at other recordings the next day and see accurately check and how many how many bats you had. And it's quite good as well for getting calls of cryptic species like the Myotis calls for Bechstein's and and Daubenton's. And as he helps collect the database of library calls, as soon as it's fed into that work as well, which has been been quite important. So yeah, they're generally the methods that we've used, obviously, with COVID. Last year, the methods we use requite restrictive, so we were unable to capture a handle that so for the first into 2018, we had, and 2017 2018, we had a project licence, which was a scientific conservation licence, which had a purpose to measure the baseline, you know, compared to a year on year, at the moment due to the COVID precautions from the IUCN guidelines. So therefore, we've been using non invasive methods. Ryan has been mainly leading on the bat walks and bat talks and just using bat detectors and and obviously, contributing to the MB NP, I'll pass it over to Ryan to let you know how many

Ryan Greaves: 18:05

Yeah, so I monitor I think, five or six different properties on the estate and their back colonies. And how numbers are changing there, which is sort of a good year on year comparison, are also quite lucky that as net has grown in sort of popularity and interest, we get a lot more volunteers wanting to get involved in surveys so and other different types of surveys, so bird surveys or, or general surveys, but they've been getting involved in sort of audio moths leaving out static detectors and recording. And we've also got a new regenerative agriculture project. So a lot of the fields is owned by the owned by the estate, but aren't part of the rewilding project, they're now going to be farmed in different ways, sort of monitor how they can sort of improve soil quality, or just monitor how the land will improve. So sort of some of the fields will be pasture, some of them will be growing, some of them will be putting chickens on and sort of rotating throughout the year. And so we've just started doing the baseline for those cars, bats are going to be a key part of of how those, that project is benefiting wildlife.

Steve Roe: 19:12

So for like the transect surveys you've been doing how does that happen year after year? Obviously, as the landscape changes, presumably, it's very hard to suddenly dive through a load of scrub, how do you manage that sort of challenge.

Ryan Greaves: 19:23

Most of the estate has footpath, that sort of general public footpath that needs to be maintained. So you can currently get around the edges. And they're all most of them were farmed fields. So they all have hedges, and they all have ditches that you can kind of make your way around or find gaps in the hedges to kind of squeeze around. But it does get a little bit more rambley every year and a lot more tripping over. But you get

Unknown: 19:48

Yeah, I did have a rather large pig with his head in my harp trap. One evening when we were catching that, and I didn't know who was going to win the pig, the pig or the bat at that point. I just had to politely wait for the pig to lose interest in the harp trap and then and let them go on their merry way. But they're just mostly curious. I think they're very, very

Ryan Greaves: 20:16

curious. I haven't got very good eyesight but something new and smelly will definitely Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Roe: 20:23

So outside of COVID times when you are doing the harp trap and mist netting and how often you on sites. How many nights of the year do you reckon you're here?

Unknown: 20:30

Probably about three. Yeah, about three less it's a specific unless it's for a specific project. Yeah, and we run normally three or four. We combined with bats with moths because our head ecologist here at the estate is called Penny Green and she and her husband are kind of chairs of the local moth group so they're big on moths, whereas we bring the kind of bat side of it. And it's a nice kind of quirky, very niche, but a very popular Safari. So yeah, we get people out. And we've tried to coincide a bit of either trapping or some kind of general surveying with those safaris to show people how the, the bats and other things are being monitored.

Stephanie Murphy: 21:14

So last people see bats in the hand, the food that they eat, and here bats with the bat detector, so it gives them the whole experience really, which is quite nice.

Steve Roe: 21:23

You've asked the last question, because I was gonna say, bat walks sell out pretty quickly. What do you reckon is that draws people in but I suppose you've nailed thaton the head really! How did you both get into that? What is it about that that made you stand out on the trails with me?

Unknown: 21:41

Well, I grew up in the west of Ireland, and my nan had a an outbuilding. She was a pig farm, which had lesser horseshoes. So I used to be fascinated by the mud. I could hear the because because what I my my hearing was good when I was young. I could hear the funny. They sounded like the Clangers almost Yeah. And I could hear the kind of very pitch noisy so my gut needs to fascinate me eyes. And so when I went to university, I straightaway pestered David Hill and Frank Greenaway to let me work at Ebanoe with them. Join us us expat group before I went to university, I think. And yeah, just just just pester them to let me come out with them on bad surveys as often and as frequently as possible, say, as until I became a useful irritant. And they Yeah, I just I enjoy being out at night. I enjoy being out in the countryside at night. I know people find that a bit odd. But I enjoy being out in the woods at night I find it is quite common. I was always feel good. After coming home after a good night out doing bat surveys. Not cold wet night, but a good summer's night. You just it's just it's a very satisfying sleep you get after it as long as you don't have to get up to emails the next day. But yeah, in when I started off, the pay was a lot. It was a lot easier. Only didn't have the day job when you were a student, it was definitely a lot easier to do. But yeah, the passion is still there. Right? I didn't quite grow up as wild as stiff. I was in the middle of Brighton. I remember. I think most people in the back world have heard of Jenny Clark, who's like, who run the Sussex, bat hospital for about 30 years. And I remember her coming to my infant school when I was about six or seven and showing us bats that really stuck with me. And then sort of wildlife was what I was interested in. I went to university studied Zoology at Southampton, and my dissertation project was about bats and sort of comparing that feeding activity on sites. So I went back to Brighton and found the best bat sites around Brighton and even sort of right in the middle of town in Brighton you get Sarah teen sort of circling around in the parks, which is really, really quite exciting. So yeah, so finished University joined the bat group. And just been more and more involved and more and more fascinated over the years.

Steve Roe: 25:04

In terms of visitor impact on that. I mean, obviously it's a revolving state, how many visitors do you have each year?

Ryan Greaves: 25:13

I'm not sure the exact number on I know there was 35,000 just sort of walking visitors last year who weren't staying on the campsite or visiting for a safari. So it must have been sort of 75,000 or something like it's a lot a lot of people and I came here in 2015. And it was still sort of in its infancy in terms of the tourism side of the business and sort of spreading the word about rewilding, but yes, it's really exciting and rewarding place to work. But yeah, there's a lot of a lot of people and we try and keep people on the footpath. So there's areas where the wildlife can retreat to if it if they want some peace and quiet but yeah, it's it's really nice. It's not only people in conservation, but it's really crossed over to a wider audience with some of the kind of big reintroduction projects that have happened with the storks and that kind of things. It's it's crossing over, but a lot of people,

Steve Roe: 26:10

a lot of people and once you recognise about the project that's inspired the public or grab their attention. You know, what hasn't made Knepp so popular?

Ryan Greaves: 26:19

I think rewilding is quite an exciting idea and does you know the talk about the large predators like wolves and the Lynx and you know, As and all that kind of stuff does spark conversation. Or we don't have enough land to have wolves and Lynx. Unfortunately, we did the we did the math and it was about half a lynx. But yeah, I think it's nice to have a positive conservation stories and, and you have species like turtle dove and Nightingale that declined by like 98% in the last 50 years and on the estate each year the numbers are going up and things like cookies and the bats that we've talked about and purple Emperor butterflies, all these charismatic, declining species are now returning and recovering a place like this. So yeah, I think people are always or need positive conservation stories because it can be a bit doom and gloom.

Steve Roe: 27:15

So in her book, Wilding Isabella mentions, that's a number of times and she mentioned that she used to go down and watch Frank Greenaway do the trapping. Does she still come out? Does she still have that interest?

Stephanie Murphy: 27:27

I'm sure she certainly does have this interest. But I'd imagine she's quite a busy lady. As the as the site has significantly developed as a, you know, rewilding site. It's a tough business now with the safaris and everything. But as Ryan mentioned, the site now has its own estate ecologist who fulfils that role, I guess. And Penny does come out on the bat surveys. Quite a lot. And yeah, I'm sure Isabella would like to come up, but it's often packed full of people.

Ryan Greaves: 28:08

I think considering how much they have on they are still very hands on with every aspect of the estate. But they are now sort of their advocates through rewilding. And there's a lot more people interested in rewilding from both the business and the sort of ideological point of view. So their time is spare time is very precious. Short. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that they're always asking about what's going on and keeping in touch with everything. But they're here there and everywhere trying to help people other other people start rewilding projects.

Steve Roe: 28:44

So what do you reckon the future looks like for the conservation of bats and Knepp? Is there a conservation strategy in mind? And what would success even look like?

Unknown: 28:53

I think that the big idea now with with Knepp is that we, we kind of know that what we've done here is is benefiting wildlife is benefiting biodiversity, but it's about connecting up a wider area. So we've now got sort of a farm cluster group with neighbouring farmers, I think it's about 25 different farms, who maybe they might try a little bit of rewilding, or just trying to connect up. So the plan is to try and make sort of a wild corridor from Knepp, which goes down to the sea clumping. And then also goes up to the Ashdown forest so we're hoping sort of a connected highway of biodiversity and maybe a few more little pop up nips here, there and everywhere to just Yeah, because bats are one of those species that will become quite isolated. If there's one pocket of good habitat, they need a wider range of habitats. So the idea is that connect up and give them a big network of the suitable habitat but yeah, we're hoping that new species will colonise with the greater horseshoe thing is quite exciting. In West Sussex we've got now breeding greater horseshoes in Sussex. So it's not too far from the it's I worked it out before. So it's very excited. Actually, we found a confirmed breeding roost of greater horseshoes. Probably, it's about 15 miles as the bat flies through here so well within within their range. And the type of habitat for foraging and feeding here is absolutely perfect. So we've identified the Sussex backrow have identified a stable form a stable block at an undisclosed currently location. And it confirmed that we always use the odd bat here, and obviously, they've got the cooking and singleton and drovers, which are the SACs for bats, so for hibernation, and then there was always the odd one or two there, but they're the tunnels. Yeah, they're the tunnels. And so but we There was never a confirmed breeding race, but there's also Oh, there must be one somewhere there must be one somewhere. It was identified in 2018 by Scotty and he's part of the Sussex back group. And then they confirmed breeding they put infrared cameras in and confirm that. It's a very small founder colony. So the nearest to put this into context, the nearest breeding colony is 100. kilometres to the east endorses. So it's quite a big jump and range. So it's so we've worked in partnership with the Vincent Wildlife Trust, to try and raise money, we've raised enough money with the Sussex bat group to take the building off the market. So we've raised the deposit, which is very exciting. And and we're now kind of trying to crowd fund and and have various things for fundraising events to get the rest of the building. But the idea is, it's not just single species conservation. The this is an, you know, a really important species that was pretty much on the brink of decline. And, you know, as part of the work, the vintage wildlife trusts are not just with bats, they work with other species as well. This will allow through the networks of habitats and through Habitat improvements, the species to move east, they were in the home counties, he used to be in London, you know, so 100 years ago, they were they were in London. So, you know, they've read this is, this could be a very, very good news story. And just looking at some of the structures on the net estate that me and Ryan were spotted on the way in some of the like little ice houses and you know, kind of underground kind of pumping stations and things. These are exactly the type of habitat. So if we, you know, we can get this founder colony kind of well established, its stone's throw for this for the species to turn up here. And that would be a very good conservation success story.

Steve Roe: 33:05

Do you know if there are any long term plans with a view to safeguard bat conservation at Knepp?

Ryan Greaves: 33:11

so the estate's always looking at conservation and all aspects we had, that conservation trusts and bug life's agents of the future back from the brink project here last year, looking at some of our younger oak trees, thinking about which ones are going to be those kind of dominant oaks of the future. Because if anyone comes to visit, you'll notice that there are some incredible oak trees all over the estate, including the one with Stanley. And so yeah, those, they're looking at ways that they can make sure that these these big mature trees are really healthy and really viable for the future. In terms of any building work that happens on the state, or any kind of development projects, everything is sort of conservation. And sustainability is always put at the forefront of that. So some of the buildings that have had to have work done have sort of put things in like opening up whether boarding or putting in back bricks and anything, everything they can do for bats. And we've seen that that's already worked on some of the properties on the estate. So

Stephanie Murphy: 34:17

it certainly worked on the one with enthusiast fan because that had been recently refurbished. And we miss who's never been recorded on the estate before and, and it turned up in Yeah. And one of the recently refurbished houses, which was a nice find.

Ryan Greaves: 34:33

Yeah, so that's all conservation. And that's a really key part of that

Steve Roe: 34:38

Nice. Ryan and Steph, thank you very much.

Ryan & Steph: 34:41

You're welcome, Steve.

Steve Roe: 34:45

Thanks again to both Ryan and Steph. And you can follow them on social media. Their pages are in the show notes. If you want to find out more about net but there's plenty more info in our show notes. And to Penny Green their ecologist hosts the Knepp rewilding podcast, so you can get more audio from the site there. Bats are magical but misunderstood mammals. Here at the Bat Conservation Trust, we have a vision of a world rich in wildlife, where bats and people thrive together. We know that conservation action to protect and conserve bats is having a positive impact on bat populations in the UK, we would not be able to continue our work to protect bats and their habitats without your contribution. So if you can please donate, we need your support now more than ever, to donate, please head to the link at the bottom of the shownotes. Thank you. And that brings us to the end of series three of BatChat. I really hope you've enjoyed listening to our 12 guests this series and the Bat Conservation stories being told, it really helps us as a show if you leave us a review about that chat, either in a podcast app or on social media instructions of how to leave a review or in the show notes. And you can tag us on social media using the hashtag BatChat. With BatChat, we're reaching out to lovers of bats all over the world. So if you know someone who's never listened to a podcast before, we'd love it, if you could show them how to listen and how to find BatChat. Recording for series four is already underway and will be coming later in the year. We're looking for participants to share back stories from across the UK with the podcast. So if you're working on a great back project or have a story about the bats in your area to share, please drop us an email to the address in the show notes. We hope you all have a fantastic summer getting out there and enjoy seeing bats in the night sky. BatChat is an original podcast from the Bat Conservation Trust. The series producer and editor was me, Steve Roe. And I need to give a huge thanks to all my guests this series because without them this show wouldn't happen. And to the communications team of BCT, Joe Nunez-Mino and Andrea Correia da Costa for their fabulous work and support in promoting goes on social media and linking to the episodes on the BCT website. And of course, without you listening to us, there wouldn't be any point in producing the show. So a huge thanks to you guys, our listeners for your ongoing support of the show. I'm going to leave you with the sound of bats hunting over the Knepp rewilding Estate.