Bats at the National Trust

S5E54 This week Steve sits down with Joanne Hodgkins, nature conservation advisor for the National Trust. Sitting in the hot August sunshine at The Vyne near Basingstoke, Steve finds out how the National Trust cares not just for it's special places, but for it's special wildlife. Jo explains how bats are now a day to day part of her role at the Trust, how bats are at the centre of most projects on their Estates and how bat groups are an important part of the story.

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• Bats at the National Trust webpages
• Bats and historic buildings

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Transcript

Steve Roe: 0:41

This is BatChat, the podcast from the Bat Conservation Trust, where we're taking you out into the field to discover the world of bat conservation. Welcome back, folks, you're listening to BatChat, which is for anyone with an interest in the enigmatic mammals filling our skies at night. I'm Steve Roe professionally, I'm an ecologist and in my spare time as well as doing this podcast, I'm a trustee for the Bat Conservation Trust. This is the penultimate episode of this series the sound you can hear from a microphone which I placed next to an artificial tree hole, which is home to over 60 lies as bats and as well as the roost chatter. You can hear the scuffling sounds as they're leaving the bat box which is made from a piece of tree trunk. This particular box is located on a national trust property in the Midlands, but in the morning, I'm off down to a property called The Vyne near Basingstoke to meet the person who is essentially in charge of the largest number of bat roosts in the country. Where we're currently in the nearly the middle of August, and I'm down in Hampshire just north of Basingstoke with Jo Hodgkins Jo's finished work for the day, and she's got to get back to the other white. So thank you for taking time out and staying behind to do the interview. You're the National Trust nature conservation adviser for London in the southeast. How did your career path get you to this amazing job?

Jo Hodgkins: 2:11

Oh gosh, yeah. Well, it started off way back when I was at school, really just having a passion for nature and parents who, luckily are interested in nature and wildflowers as well. Yeah, so I actually my first roles with the wildlife trusts are volunteering, working, doing wildlife site surveys and land management advice to landowners before managing a liquor record Centre in local government, and then deciding I really, really needed to back out again, on the ground with people delivering for nature. So yeah, luckily, I got a project post with the National Trust, which led to a full time job and that was 22 years ago.

Steve Roe: 2:52

We've got you on because you, monks, many things you do you do a lot of the bat work. How often do you encounter bats in your day to day job? And have you ended up doing a lot of bad stuff with the trust?

Jo Hodgkins: 3:03

Yeah, well, the the trust, as well as having all our land and estates, obviously, lots of old buildings, and most of them are bat roost. We encounter them through survey when we're doing our day to day work, like repairs, conservation work on buildings tree work. But we did do a sample a few years ago, to look at how often we might encounter about so so we took a sample of buildings and determined that had batteries or not, and worked out actually is about 95% of Trust buildings have that roosts or bat potential land that she use for foraging. So we have a working assumption that on every project, every built conservation project we do, it's going to involve bats. So the role I have as a regional nature conservation advisor means that I'm the person who often advises on the process to get site surveyed, what's required licencing and those kinds of things working with external contractors. So we have good networks of external partners and contractors we work with as well, because I couldn't possibly do the groundwork for all the projects that are involving bats at any one time. So it's sort of advisory from my point of view. So probably in the average week, I would say I'm probably dealing with bats or other protective species or calls about them probably every other day, something like that. And there's a project going on all the time. In in our region, probably double figures of projects at the minute involving bats, but I actually got into bats. Through working with the trust, I had kind of a casual interest in bats. Before I came to work for the trust, and it started getting interested in joining a local back group. But I didn't have that urge to kind of be a volunteer batteries visitor and call around in people's locks. It wasn't until coming to the trust and actually working with someone who was a bit of a mentor, guy called David Bullock with that, who sort of challenged me to get my licence get my rabies jobs because I'm a bit needle phobic or I was several years ago. And if I did that, I could go on some mining, some mine checks for horseshoes in Gloucestershire. So that challenge was kind of enough really. And I that's how I kind of got into it and from then on just got much more actively involved in doing that work and more of this little survey and research side of it and stuff at the trust as well, sort of using my licence to get access to some really fabulous old buildings rather than sort of dusty lofts on big, big mansion lofts with roosts in so yeah, I'm very lucky.

Steve Roe: 5:49

And you, you said the working assumption that all trust buildings, or at least 95% of them have roofs. And when you put that into context, the trust stones over 50,000 buildings, so the trust probably is the largest single roof tender in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, clearly, you've got a huge responsibility for our species and populations. What sort of work does the National Trust do to help conserve that species? And? And yeah, what sort of what sort of conservation projects do you have to think about? The trust obviously has to update its belt and things like fire eggs? How often do bats crop up and cause? Not issues, but complications for projects? I guess?

Jo Hodgkins: 6:26

Yeah, it's, it's in the vast majority of projects, really, we, we have within the trust of a cohort building surveyors who lead a lot of the conservation work on our built heritage, buildings, and even our residential sort of letter state. So I work with them quite a lot in the region, we tend to try and roll out refresher training every now and again, just so they're ofay with the sort of basics and who to go to when they're planning projects, and how to know commission back surveys and preliminary ecological assessments and risk assessments. So that's kind of a process is that, you know, right at the start is planning early, we know we're going to encounter protecting species, usually bats, great crested newts, and others, when we're doing conservation work. To get those assessments in early as a matter of course, try and keep people educated and trained, and then run with the projects as they involve. So sort of an example, sometimes they can be really straightforward. So it'll be, you know, electrical work or fire alarms in a cottage on one of the trust estates. So sort of the residential estate, or as you said, it could be the big fire compartmentation projects where we have, you know, 16th century buildings with huge great big roof spaces that are just opened. And we now need to deal with fire egg. So we've, we've sort of developed good relationships with our fire offices as well, and tried to test and then develop approaches to putting that flaps back doors, in firewalls in a loss after getting proper surveys, and assessments. And trying to make a big emphasis on monitoring those afterwards as well to see if it's worked. And if things are still effective. Yeah, to actually the ones that are more challenging, like a big reroofing project on a, you know, grade one listed mansion of national significance. And, or, you know, really sort of far more complicated projects. Were also sort of testing how we do it. So on a swarming site, for example, in one of our properties, so, yeah, really challenging. I mean, we're here at the vine at the moment. So that was a few years ago, big reroofing project. So we did a lot of work on that to make sure we compensated, you know, the, I think it's three species of that, that roost here in the building. So just

Steve Roe: 8:55

tell us a bit more about that. Bruce, then in terms of because we're sad, we can just see the corner the building through the trees, just tell us a bit more about that project.

Jo Hodgkins: 9:02

Yeah, so I'm gonna forget the architectural significance of the building now. But yeah, it's a huge mansion in various phases of development. Some from sort of early mediaeval onwards, the conservation condition, reviews of the built structure revealed that there are problems with the roof and leaks, chimneys that were structurally unsound. So we had a major project over a number of years to re roof and repair. And doing doing it in such a way also kept in touch with the history of the building, but also the species of bat and other wildlife we had here. So the early part of feasibility development was getting all those surveys done. Yeah, I think it's three species roost here. But I might have remembered that wrong. But yeah, so we did have maternity rousse on we had whiskered, long, brown, long eared and pips, I think. And so we working with a consultant, we developed a sort of phased approach to the building of work, working outside of the sort of sensitive periods under licence, putting back better access, you know, putting back roosts, enhancing as we went as well, were working in with the building as well. So we developed there was there's several phases of roofing tile here, for example, in stone, so we've got different bat access tiles for each kind of architectural carry. through the roof, bit sort of little lab consultant called them little bat ladders she developed working with the contractor that got bats up under the tiles and over like, lath and plaster work. So yeah, so lots of that was done with a sort of good contractor as well. And alongside actually showing the public what we were doing as well. So alongside a big, big project to do the reroof, as well as all the protective species workers involved, it was also having scaffold access to members of the public to look what we were doing and look at the work we're doing to take nature into account and just showing sort of that best practice really.

Steve Roe: 11:15

We visited Lake Okeechobee with Wendy priests from Wiltshire group this series where they've got soprano pipistrelles emerging from the mouths of gargoyles on fountains tower. What are the usual route sites do you have? Or do you have a favourite roost?

Jo Hodgkins: 11:27

Oh gosh, that's difficult question. Yeah, a lot of them are in roof spaces. But I think one of my favourites is is actually Clifton, where we have a swarming site under what is a, you know, cute, hugely architecture, important structure, the south terrace. So there are a few Majan it's got huge archways, they're like the males of caves, big brick and stone vaults. And that has awesome swarming. And that is one of my favourites because we kind of stumbled upon it almost in the early part of feasibility for that project. And just having a look around the building thinking, Ah, there are about droppings here. And then I and a local consultant, as well. He was also in the back group I was a member of at the time, sort of just having a little bit of investigation and thinking, Ah, we think we've got we might have swarming here, which is just really exciting, you know, and it's been kind of an exciting journey and a challenging journey as well. Just working out how we could do the conservation work on that structure. And just keep that significance for wildlife as well.

Steve Roe: 13:18

When I was researching questions for this, I was looking at what you've put on the National Trust website, and I was thinking, well, you must have roost or at least you properties obviously have support for all 17 species. But then am I right in thinking you've also you also end the railway tunnel where the one that turns up for progress, Mao said,

Jo Hodgkins: 13:34

Yeah, we do. Yeah, that's yeah, that is in my my region, but I actually share the region with another nature conservation advisor. And that property is in his portfolio. So I haven't ever been in Now I would love dearly love. But yes, we do. We do have that very special bat or two now. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, we have got that as well. Yeah. So it's, it's great. And

Steve Roe: 14:00

we see headlines all the time now that changes in farming practices remain factor in the decline of wildlife in the last few decades. Obviously, large proportion of NT land is farms. So how much of a focus does the trust have with regards to encouraging farmers and their tenant farmers to manage land with wildlife in mind, and how effective is it? And yeah,

Jo Hodgkins: 14:17

that's a really big push that the trustee is trying to do at the moment, or has been trying to do for this of last eight, nine years. Current strategy period is to try and improve the condition of our land for nature, including that tenanted farmland, I mean, we don't manage it in hand, the vast majority of that is managed through sort of farming partners or farm tenants. And we try to work with them to to improve the state of nature on farm. Obviously, that has its challenges, but we have some wonderful examples within the trust. And within the team I work in, we've got a farm advisor, as well as land use and farming advisor who's, you know, trying to do the same thing as well, whether it's, you know, changing the way someone farms from perhaps a conventional intensive model to sort of regenerative model we've, we've started to look at effectiveness of our interventions on our farmland. But it's early days, we we've done some work over the last few years with Bat Conservation Trust actually comparing bats on trust land aloft trust land to see if there was a difference if we could use it as a metric for a sort of strategic metric for measuring how effective some of those land management changes have been. And that was a really interesting piece of work. We didn't have significant results for all species to sum the size of the data, the amount of data we needed for effective sample to detect change was quite challenging as well. So that's still something I'd like to explore more in future moment of this strategy period, we have got effectively what we call one of our outcome metrics, which is bats, the others are butterflies, birds and plants to detect, you know, how effective would be overall with our strategy changes and influencing our farm tenants and

Steve Roe: 16:15

of those conservation practice things like increasing margins failed, is it that sort of thing? Yeah. It's

Jo Hodgkins: 16:21

it's a whole range to be honest. I mean, what working with farmers, you know, is also taking into account sort of their business model as well and whether we can diversify or help them change. So it might be no Phil margins more hedges might actually be taking some land out or food production for nature, or diversifying their grazing model, making it more extensive. Whether it's direct intervention into sites, to green hay, grasslands, plant more trees, or allow more natural regeneration. So it's, it's a huge range. You know, right from those tree planting projects, no transforming land management effectively to just simple things like fill margins, good hedge management. Yeah, we do margins, small, small interventions like that. And I'll even soil you know, just making sure our soil is in good health as well.

Steve Roe: 17:21

And I've seen it in my mattress properties in the region, I come from up in the Midlands, we've seen the mattress, either taking on long term leases or buying new land at sort of landscape scale. Is the trust working towards more of a landscape scale in terms of its effectiveness and taking on less of a property portfolio. Is it looking to move into the landscape side of things?

Jo Hodgkins: 17:43

Um, I think it's still a bit of both Yeah, we're definitely trying to work or landscape scale. But that might not necessarily be through acquisition that could be through working in partnership with neighbouring landowners, whether they're, you know, NGOs, private landowners, farmers, etc. So it's, it's whatever works for the particular situation, really. And that might be acquisition. In some cases, it can be just working more closely with some of our own tenants, and working in partnership. So it's, it's the whole range. But absolutely, you know, we've within the trust, we're within our sort of what we call out of London nature sphere of work, we're very much following those laws and principles. And we we've got internal measures that kind of reflect those as well. So we're often trying to make our own landholding better, as well, as, you know, increasing the habitat, we have creating restoring habitat, and connecting it as well into partners land or our own land. So definitely, definitely trying to do that landscape scale piece.

Steve Roe: 18:43

Coming back then to properties like this one, obviously, a lot of them are closed at night, how does National Trust enable the general public to experience bats on their properties? And what sort of things you do? And then can you do more? Yeah,

Jo Hodgkins: 18:56

it's lots of time in terms of doing more, it's just really down to capacity in a lot of places. Yeah. But yes, I mean, we do we have lots of brilliant rangers and lots of group partners as well, you help run bat walks on properties. We have some places that have cameras like CCTV and battery. So we're able to show that on social media or in visitor centres. It's a sort of really depends on the place really eminent I think there's all there's always a challenge to try to do more and try and be more innovative about it. So yeah, we definitely look to sort of try and take some of those opportunities. Yeah, I think there are some properties who have also trialled out of ours access, like to doing something we used to call the big camp that we did for a few years and still happens on some properties where people, you know, we organise a camp for the night where we do bat walks, or might be running some bat surveys at the time, just incidentally, so we, you know, show people what we're doing.

Steve Roe: 19:53

You touched on backups. What role do local backups play in the trust work? And in from data on from we've got access to quite a lot of properties. And presumably, lots of back groups have the same across the country? Yeah,

Jo Hodgkins: 20:03

it's a really good partnership work there. I mean, it's the trust that relies on volunteers, essentially, to deliver a lot of its work. And particularly when we're talking about some of our wildlife monitoring, sort of the routine, sort of stuff like butterfly Transics route counts, those kinds of things. We very much rely on volunteers to do that. And working with bat groups is brilliant in that respect to now help us galvanise and train other volunteers to monitor some of our roosts to help us with bat work and bat walks and engage people with bats. Yeah, so that there's some really good partnerships that groups and you know, we always encourage all of our properties to, you know, find out who your local bat group members are, or representatives, you know, and build that partnership, because it's a really good one to have.

Steve Roe: 20:47

And then do you just want to talk about some of the case studies that you've sort of been memorable over the years in terms of stuff you've worked with on pass them? Um,

Jo Hodgkins: 20:55

yeah, well, I've sort of mentioned the vinery roofing project, which was a big one where we've developed sort of lots of interesting work to mitigate the impact on bats. But I mean, there's there's some that have been have taken up sort of years of my life effectively, in good ways and bad in the trust, which because of you know, because of the length of time it can take to do some of these building conservation work. So some, some are memorable, just for that, but they're also memorable. So challenging when I had mentioned Clifton, which was, you know, a five year project to restore this hugely significant structure that we discovered we had autumn swarming in. So how are we going to balance now working at the right time of year for some of the building structure things like lime mortars and things like that, and how we would then deal with, you know, auto swarming hibernation use of the site, the complications of licencing it and whether we need to hard work, so we had lots of discussions in Natural England and with Donald Trump at the time, he was a volunteer specialist for the trust is hugely helpful, navigating through that. So we did find a really good working solution and a window where we could work on a contractor who really understood that and helps deliver that. So it was a very, sort of long, five years, making those phasing work, when it would have the least impact. Always vacating the structures and leaving them back friendly, you know, every, by the end of August every year, just to make sure we had, you know, all that swarming capacity there. So that was that was really challenging as sort of a favourite in the way that we did it. We learned an awful lot, and, you know, delivered it, and we think it's been successful. The sort of post project monitoring we've done, but there were challenges along the way, I'd have to be honest. And then another another project that I'm sort of quite fond of discuss. I really love the property was just one of the fire compartmentation projects at Charles Charleston. Yeah. So it's quite a small manor house that the Trust has only had since the 90s. And it's it's not one that's like presented to the museum standard. The trust often does have its collections. When it was acquired. It was in it was lived in as a family house. And so it has the air about it. And that's one reason I love it because you walk into it and you just think, yeah, it live here is this really lovely, but it has these fabulous roof voids that have long haired Riesen Myotis. And historically, also horseshoes apparently. Another reason it's sort of a favourite is because Pruitt is one of the family he used to be involved there sort of told one of my colleagues when she was a girl that horseshoe bats, I think it's less a horseshoe bats used to fly down the staircase within the house from the lofts and sort of exit a basement level and they would sit and watch them. And I just thought how fantastic and wouldn't it be wonderful if we got that back at some point into the property that I mean they then they haven't ever been there. In sort of my 10 year we had some potential what a say some a potential dropping of a horseshoe in one of the old stable buildings there are probably in the early 2000s. But I've never found anything since but it would be fantastic if horseshoes came back there.

Steve Roe: 24:25

This is a horrible question. Do you know what the largest roofs you've got as

Jo Hodgkins: 24:29

well? Now there was I don't know if this is still current figures. But we did some work about now. It must be eight years ago looking at the impact of mitigation work we've done so I went to case studies where we've done building work with that stump mitigation and and tracked the success or not of it. And doing that I came across a reset of soprano pipistrelles, which was at the time of the work counted at 50 100. So I don't know if we've got a bigger one than that at the moment. Yeah, that's pretty impressive, man. I know. There's Seaton Delaval. In the north, they're hibernating pips as well. I think some of those estimates were sort of in three hundreds. She's pretty good for hibernation. Yeah. But yes, I'm, I don't know if we've got, you know, the good, good enough data really about numbers to know the biggest roost but that's got to be a contender.

Steve Roe: 25:30

Joe Hodgkins, thank you very much for taking time out to come on bacha.

Jo Hodgkins: 25:34

Thank you. It's been brilliant chatting.

Steve Roe: 25:37

Massive thanks to Joe for taking the time to sit with me in the baking gauger sunshine to give us that insight into bats at the National Trust. We've put a link in the show notes to some of the National Trust webpage is about that, as well as links to more information about bats in historic buildings. We'll be back in two weeks time when I'll be over in Wales. And you'll be joining me at the entrance to a cave in amongst temperate rainforest for the final episode of this series and capture them