How to get a bat licence - with Richard Crompton

S5E55 Sat in the entrance to a cave in Wales, hidden amongst temperate rainforest, Richard Crompton gives you his insight into the best way to go about getting your bat licence. Richard has been training ecologists for many years now with around 400 people coming to his courses over the years. In this episode you'll hear about the different bodies that give licences, the different levels of licences and what they allow you to do, which one you should aim for as a consultant ecologist and the sort of activities that are most useful. We also hear about Richard's journey into bat conservation and how he nearly took a job at the Bat Conservation Trust, before turning it down!

• Find Richard on twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn
• Richard's Ecology on Demand website
• Training courses from the Bat Conservation Trust

Got questions, thoughts, or curious bat queries? Text us—we’d love to hear from you!

Transcript

Steve Roe: 0:07

Hello and welcome to BatChat, the podcast from the Bat Conservation Trust, where we're taking you out into the field to discover the world of bat conservation. Yes, hello, welcome back, folks, you're listening to BatChat, which is for anyone with an interest in the secret of 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 final episode of Series five, but don't panic. We have some news on that for you later in the show. This week, I'm taking you to a Welsh woodland to meet Richard Crompton. Over the years I've had countless people asked me how to go about getting a bat licence. And so I thought who better to guide you through the process than someone who has trained nearly 400 people for their bat licence? So I don't think anybody could accuse me of not putting effort in to get these episodes. I was up at four this morning to get over to South Wales to meet our guest today, who is very well known in the back worlds. And with Richard Crompton, which is a name familiar to lots of people in the bat world, Richard do you want to, describe where we are, first of all, in terms of Wales.

Richard Crompton: 1:20

Sure, yeah. Well, thanks for coming out this way, Steve? Yeah, we're actually just outside of Bridgend, just off the M4 you can possibly just hear the the hum of vehicles in the distance. And this is a natural cave that we've just come to look at today. And we've just counted 48 lesser horseshoe bats in here, which is a little bit down on last year, but it's it's a cave that is subject to quite a lot of disturbance. So but we promise you some horseshoe bats, so it has to be done. Yeah,

Steve Roe: 1:46

we're very well delivered. And we're in predominantly Ash woodland and it's quite steep. We're just sheltering in the entrance of the cave, because it's just starting to drizzle a little bit. So, Richard, how did you get into that? And how long have you been doing that work?

Unknown: 2:00

My journey started. I was volunteering with a National Trust done and park in Cheshire, just on the Cheshire Manchester border, actually Duke of Edinburgh Award it was, but it was very much. i The career wise, I wanted to be a kind of park Warden that was a countryside Ranger, that that sort of thing. That was what I was very much about and age 15, I think it was I went on about walk that was run by one of the local back groups. And it was just kind of wow, this is, this is amazing, actually. And at that point, basically, as a volunteer Warden, I went on a lot of the guided walks and things and they were good, you know, they were all good. But for some reason, this one just was, wow. Okay, this is really special. Also, it confirmed what I'd always suspected, which is I could hear a lot of the bats. So certainly at that age, 1516 years of age, I could, you know, hear the knock jaws and not the pipistrel feeding calls and social calls and things like that. But actually, these people are actually able to tell me what I was hearing, which is very exciting. And this clearly enthused me a lot, I was quite nerdy as a teenager and went off and built myself one of those kit magenta back detectors to get the physics teacher at school to help me finish it off, because I've done something wrong. And so I went back the following year, and they were kind of all this kids keen sort of thing. So that was that was really nice. But I remember having a conversation with the park manager about it and and saying, I think I think there was a different way of delivering this, I think it can be, we've got a very sort of Cosmopolitan population close to, you know, got Manchester, Liverpool, for a small part small deer park an awful lot of people. And so I think I suggested there was perhaps a different way of delivering it, and we could reach out promote it better. I think I just literally got this huge excitable bug about it, you know? And he said, Okay, what you can do next year that, so he kind of gave me a year. So I think age 17, I gave my first guided bat work. And that wasn't so much me. I mean, you know, back back groups ebb and flow, don't they? And I think I think the, the, the group that was doing it at that point, they I think they found it difficult was outside of their area and that sort of stuff. So I think they were quite happy to let somebody else do it. But they still came along and helped, which was really good. And it was both terrifying and amazing in equal measure. And so I did that did that for a few years. And we had no we didn't have a couple of 100 people on one of them and relayed the talk with walkie talkies and things like silly to be honest, looking back it was it was ridiculous. But what what an amazing start, and then I went to Aberystwyth University and studied countryside management and my lecturers sort of said, Don't do bats, you got a lot of knowledge about bats try and do something different. But I just knew that the only way I would really manage my dissertation was to do on bats. I knew I'd actually get it done if I did that. So I spent a whole summer doing doing surveys looking primarily at the weather and the and the impact on bat activity. At that property that national trust property and another one so so Country Park, very close to Manchester Airport. And in doing so I was I was doing I think I did 444 nights a week and two Don's a week throughout the whole summer, and I'd recently been on a workshop in the Lake District with Tony Hutson. Tomic, how it took me Tomica it gave me a lift there. Before I even really knew him. I rang up this guy called Tom. And he said, I can pick you up and give you a lift because I didn't have a car. And there was some of the I think Dutch bat workers. I don't really remember, unfortunately, I wish I did, because I'd like to thank them. teaching us about backtracking. Yeah. Which is something we've almost grown out of these days. But we've basically spent this time running around the Lake District on this course, finding bat roosts backtracking to bat roosts and it was very athletic and very exhausting. But I employed the same technique and found a lot of roosting trees, particularly at Dunham Park. And I think it was like 4748 roofs or something. And I didn't really understand that this might have been significant at the time, but when I wrote in Tony Mitchell Jones that English nature at the time, and he said, we've only actually got 56 records of tree roots in England at the moment, this is a massive, you know, this is this is really significant. So I suppose it got noticed without really meaning to I mean, it was it was, it was it was quite naive, really, but that that that's and then they said costs, enthuses you even more sort of thing. Yeah. And what a lot of people don't know is that as I graduated 1997 I actually applied for a job with that Conservation Trust as a Conservation Officer. and turned it down. For many in various reasons. It was the right thing for me at the time, I think, having lived in rural West Wales for three years and utterly adored it. I mean, just totally loved every aspect of it. I think the juxtaposition of then going to London was going to be too much for me, I think that actually looking back was was probably the main main decider for me. So I turned them down. But yeah, I remember going to a Welsh bat conference and David Woolley, who I think at the time was treasurer of BCT, who looks a bit like Captain Birdseye. And he's quite an austere character, I think, I think I suspected I think he was merchant navy or something like that at some point in his in his career, but I didn't know him. And he was sat in the library of one of the one of the Welsh field study centres or Hilton or somewhere like that. I don't remember exactly which one. And I remember going into this room to kind of check in for the conference. And it was just him in there, sat behind this massive leather top desk, and it's suddenly felt like some curious kind of interview. And he said to me, Oh, so you're Richard Crumped. And I thought, What have I done? And he leant over the desk, stood up and entered the desk and shook my hand. And he said, I think you've made a very sensible decision. I said, well done. He said, That can't have been easy. And I thought, Oh, what a nice man and, and actually enjoyed working with him on and off for many years and seen him relatively recently as well. He's an old man now, but it was nice, nice to see him because these little moments, you know, really important along the way, so and then I sort of stumbled into doing some automaton mechanics finished off my, my licence to training at the time, which was, which was great, but I'd had to travel a lot. I found that that time getting trained in the UK difficult. It seemed to be I don't know if it's a closed shop, or just that I wasn't wasn't known to the right people and living so far away, it's difficult to make connections with the right people. I mean, I still used to write to people so this was before you know, email was was was relatively new. Makes me sound ancient. And, yeah, so I've actually chosen to go abroad, been to Slovakia and New Yorker and done some trips just to try and particularly engage with some of the rarest species, because I didn't have any connections in southern England, where most of the rare species were, and I felt it was really important to have this knowledge and awareness. And so you know, I call shoebox great dealing with those, you know, that's, that's comfortable, no problem. Finding out about the wider range of species and the stuff that you encounter occasionally, but just becoming more familiar seemed really important. So it took me basically 10 years, I think, before I'd handled 10 species of bats. This, to me was ludicrous. Because I was also doing that work commercially. eat again. In that part of the world, there was a shortage. There were many people doing that there were many people doing consultancy anyway. I mean, this is in the days when used to go with three different bat detectors held on the clipboard with a elastic bands tuned to different frequencies to do surveys on the tree number one survey 1998. That's what we did. It works, you know, we got got some good results from it, really. But it was it was a very different approach to what we do now. And I think to cut a long story short, I was at a conference and chatting with Sandy Salar about this. Some years later, in fact, and and we were just sort of saying, Why is it? Why is it why have people still finding it so difficult to get trained, particularly as by this point, there was a there was a growing need for commercial, commercially trained, and commercially practising ecologists. And so she said, Well, we better do something about it. And anybody who knows Sunday will know that she makes things happen. And I think a week later we'd met up in think, hey, on why, for lunch, and we basically designed that licenced training course, over a sort of extended lunch about three hours. And we'd mulled over what we thought would work. And we'd both been trading people, you know, for some time, and we've also got an idea what work but but moving it into sort, of course format was was fairly new territory. And I think we there was certainly some resistance in some quarters about that, you know, perhaps rightly so. Because it was a new approach. And I think the onus really was on us to prove that we could deliver good trainees because of it, you know, and I think that actually, that delivers us to a point, you know, now some 14 years later, where

Richard Crompton: 11:51

most people now trained by portfolio, it's not so much a journey with a single trainer anymore. And that's not to say anything against any particular trainer. But just that with, by by going out and working with and meeting other people, you can just get a much wider a wider range of experience and you pick up the bits you like and pick up the bits you don't you don't like and make a decision about what how you're going to to operate. So I think, I think it makes a lot more sense through and

Steve Roe: 12:22

and you've done a lot of training, as you've just said that for people over the years, and you're still doing it. Now why do you still put so much time and effort in given that there's lots of other training courses now and it is easy to get into? Why do you still put that time and effort into people? Partly

Richard Crompton: 12:35

it can't help it. I love it. I love enthusing about bats. But also I don't want other people to find it. It's hard to train as I did. Yeah. And I don't think it needs to be. And also I I got, I've got a bit of a campaign to try and help people unlearn some of the things that the the assumptions and beliefs that are out there as well, and quite quite keen that we try and get away from that. You know, fixing some of the fixing some of the problems

Steve Roe: 13:10

that I've spent, the majority of people who were going to be listened to this episode are going to be looking to get get on the ladder, so they're supposed to get their bat licence. Can you just describe how the licencing process works? Because it can, especially now that we've changed into the class licencing system, it can be really confusing for people starting out a concept.

Richard Crompton: 13:28

It can there's there's there's no doubt that if you if you look at the the range of options, particularly in England, it does it does look a bit daunting. It's perhaps worth saying that England and sorry Wales and Scotland have have retained a more simple approach of licencing. And there's pros and cons to each way of looking at it to be honest, the English class licencing system for most people would look at a class level one or class level two licence. The main differences there been that a class level one doesn't permit handling and doesn't permit disturbing hibernating bugs. And a level two does and also introduces the use of an endoscope as well, which is obviously quite important. So when this system was launched, I mean, the first thing is that I think it was really good. I think the the licencing system did need looking at I remember Sandy and I wrote a letter because we already trained probably close to 100 people through that licence training course at that point. And we we we made some observations on what was coming and there were some you know, some things that we agreed with and some that we didn't and and overall we congratulated Natural England for for being bold enough to to to look and see if there was a better way of doing it because I think there was there was definitely room for improvement. That yeah, there are there are things that I'd certainly like to see done differently. What I revise it again, well, I think probably, you know, in, in the light of things like earned recognition which are coming along at the moment, I think that's going to be a new system by the looks of it. I can, I can see some positives to that. I mean, again, there's there are some teething problems with that at the moment. But all of these things are a process. And the problem is, is that the community is so diverse, that everybody's needs are going to be so very different, you know, so, but but the, the essential requirements of the of the training are always going to be exactly the same. And in very simple terms, people just need to get out there and see bats. And if there's, if there's one thing I'd say it's, it's, it's don't fall into the trap of just doing hundreds and hundreds of emergence and reentry surveys. Because whilst you, you do learn something about bats, it's important to remember that the licence itself is about licensable activities and emergence. And reentry surveys aren't a licensable activity. So whenever you go to a roost, particularly if you're, if you're assisting doing an emergency or reentry survey, asked if you can be taken inside. So actually make that visit count, even if that means turning up, you know, a couple of hours sooner or earlier in the day, or whatever it happens to be, but make it count. Because it's only by getting up close and personal with bats that you'll really learn those skills. And you don't even need to have the person that's with you train you. The the phrase I use is get them to think out loud. So just talk about what they're doing. Just give you a sort of commentary, oh, I'm looking here because this could happen. Or I'm I'm checking behind here, because that's the sort of place where we might find this species or that species that that sort of thing. And even little tips, like, how are they positioning the ladder and stuff like that is pretty important. Because it's all part of, of course, being safe, but also looking competent, as well. And if you can breathe in confidently, get your ladders upstairs in somebody's house, comfortably set it up, whilst also having a conversation, whilst easily opening the loft hatch, whatever mechanism it might be, and reasonably comfortably getting yourself up into a loft. That householder or that client is just going to be so much more comfortable instantly, just because of your body language, because you clearly know what you're doing. You know, it might sound silly, because we haven't even started thinking about the bats yet. But it's all it's all very much part of that process. And I think really important.

Steve Roe: 17:34

You touched on it there. I mean, I get people's about logs. And the second you look at this, and they've got dozens and dozens of transits, you think actually that's filtered out what you've actually got, and it's a lot less, isn't it? So just take us through the types of licences and then the different levels, I guess in the class system. Okay,

Richard Crompton: 17:48

so this, the four levels, the full class levels, 123, and four. So level one is, as I mentioned, without handling, and without disturbing hibernating bats, level two allows those things, the handling and hibernating bats and the use of endoscopes as well. So that's really the target for most people. Personally, I encourage people to avoid getting a level one licence, there are a lot of limitations to it, you can't really use it in winter. I don't like the idea of people being in a situation where they, you know, if you go into a roost in winter, and you've only got a level one licence, and then you have to get out, well, you've caused disturbance at that point, probably. And also, it's that that sort of competency thing as well. And there's actually and this is, this is one of the points I remember initially making to Natural England, is that it's harder to identify a bat, tucked tightly into a crevice than it is about in the hand. Assuming you can handle it comfortably. And actually, most people don't require that much training to be able to handle comfortably. So it sort of feels the wrong way around. Because if you if if you don't qualify for a level two licence with handling, then how are you going to identify about when you can only see its hind foot or the you know, just just the forearm and part of the year or something like that. So it's, it's slightly the wrong way around in that sense as well. So I always encourage people to focus on level two, don't sort of go for level one, and then progress to level two, focus on level two, try and get all the skills towards level two. And then if you need it, for example, to get a job or for something like that, maybe take the level one as it goes, but but still keep going towards it. And then level three and level four, many people would suggest I feel like they're the wrong way around because level three is actually adds the ability to catch bats near miss net. And level four enables people to catch bats in a harp trap. And the reason we suggest that might be the feels like the wrong way around anyway, is because it's my She's here to take a bite out of her heart trap, because you just scoop it out, then you do from a miss net, where you have to, obviously untangle it from the, from the fibres. And the net, which takes quite a lot more, quite a lot more training. I mean, I mean, in the order of, you know, several 100 bucks more to be to be not not the can't be competent if you've perhaps only done 50 or 100. But it's also that ability to know that what happens when you get one that's really tangled, because suddenly, I mean, it happened to me on the course a couple of years ago, we ended up with 12, or 14 nuptials internet at a time. And that's because the first bat called and called in all the others, and suddenly you've got bats, you've got more bass than you'd ever really want to deal with at that time. very feisty, very vocal, very bitey bats. And so you need to be able to keep you cool, not be terrified of getting bitten. Trust in the gloves, you know, and, and but but get those bats out swiftly and also, you know, be able to make the decision, right, we can close the top of this snap, so we don't catch any more before you even start. That's that sort of thing. So there's a lot more decisions because you can potentially cause a lot more harm with the Miss net. So it should, it's not a technique that should be used lightly.

Steve Roe: 21:18

So the one question I always get asked is, How long is it going to take? And it's the answer is how long is a piece of string, but in your experience, you've trained a lot of people, it on average, you know, how long should people be expected to put time and effort?

Richard Crompton: 21:33

Yeah, I probably get a couple of phone calls most weeks from from people. And that's that's nearly always one of the questions that they ask. And I always suggest assuming they've got what should we say some a background in ecology, or environmental science or some familiarity at least with with which we say the natural world, they should be looking at a couple of years minimum. And that's not to say it can't be done faster, and it perfectly well can be done faster. But I remember when I was trained, it was always very much, making sure that you you've done different activities throughout the different parts of the year. So I think it's very important to have seen that, you know, the seasonal changes in activity. I think I think to do it in one year, you'd have to be very busy, you'd have to really dedicate your life to it. And for most people, I think that's that's, that's probably unachievable or extremely, extremely challenging these days. But it does depend what your background is, you know, on what you've done previously. And some people will, will quite quite often take three or four years, you know, and it just depends how much how much you're willing to travel, you know, my view is you need to have had experience with at least the range of species. Because in England, you the standard survey, class survey licence covers you for all all of the 18 breeding species. So you shouldn't have a licence if you've not got familiarity with horseshoe bats, for example, you know, now you perhaps you can be forgiven for not having been up and close with vaccines or something like that. But at least you'll have the familiar familiarity of most of the Myotis bats, and that sort of thing, you know, perhaps you won't have ever seen a great long beard, but up close, but at least you'll be very familiar with the brown long eared bat. And you'll have read lots of grey long eared bats. And I mean, I remember by my first grade long read, but I saw, I just knew it was different as ever, I've never seen one before I just I could just tell it wasn't a brown long eared bat. So it's that sort of thing. Really. It's having that that diversity of experience. And, and like I said before, so it's great to have worked with different people, whether they're trainers or not. I mean, I think I think the role of the trainer is diminishing in this world in a formal sense. I think it's really about just going in getting good experiences. And really spending time thinking about what you're getting from that experience. And that should be reflected in the logbook as well. And that's something else that that that not everybody is told to do is to is to make that logbook with a digital or paper it doesn't really matter these days, from the very start and log everything. And I get trainees to put it to usually do it on Excel and do a tab for different activities and lists things like maybe conferences and talks and emergent surveys and things like that, but then have a tab on handling and the tab on Route visits and the tab on hibernation visits and that sort of thing. So you can be absolutely explicit when you forward it to Natural England or or whichever agency it is and show them just how much you've done of actual we call it back contact time. Back contact time we define as obviously seeing or handling bats or bat signs basically. And we try not to encourage too much emergence survey hours in that because it's easy to rock up hundreds and hundreds of emergence survey hours without really gaining that much valuable extra knowledge about the species. Yeah.

Steve Roe: 25:12

And going back to the grayling gave my first grade on get it, I've looked at it and handed thought I know now that I know that's great. I'll get even though, never seen him before. So for that person who's listening to this episode, who's thinking, what is the first thing I should be doing to get a licence? What would you say? Is it? Is it? Is it making contact with somebody? Or is it the logbook or something else?

Richard Crompton: 25:31

Definitely, it's definitely, it's all about, it's all about meeting the right people to be honest. And if you can do that through the local back groups, then that's brilliant, because that's the best the ideal place to start. When when people want to come on a training course with me, the first thing we usually do is send them away to go and get more experience. So go and get yourself, you know, 100 hours or something like that in the back before you even start to think about it. And unright it down. And don't go looking for training, I think is also a really important point. Go and get involved. Because training, in my experience arrives organically, when people once people see that you're just interested and want to be doing it. Now, there's a whole, you know, discussion, a whole separate discussion to be had about whether if you're doing it commercially, you should you should volunteer. It's an argument I revisit on many occasions, I find it difficult to be balanced in that situation. Because I'm I mean, obviously I make a career doing it. I specialise in bats, I do really nothing else these days. But also it's my my passion and my hobby and my belief as well. So I never had a problem with it. And I meet a lot of people that don't have a problem putting in those that those extra hours. Is there a case that you should be able to do it like an engineer might go to learn to assess the stress loading on a bridge, you know, on the course and come away with a certificate at the end of it? I don't know. I I find that difficult. Doesn't make it fair. All right. But I make that a difficult jump to get to that situation, really?

Steve Roe: 27:13

I mean, Richard can't see my phone because it's upside down. But the next question I had, I'm going to read this verbatim, it says something that seems to be a contentious issue is that to get any other protect species licence, you can get the experience, mainly inside your place of work. With bats, the onus is very much on new gather experience outside of work with other people. You know, why aren't that so different? And is, and is it helps making it that much harder for people to get experience?

Richard Crompton: 27:36

I mean, I think there's a there's a risk here that we make comparisons. So it's, it's possible to go on a series of courses and get a relatively small amount of experience and be a perfectly competent, great crested newts and a dormer server, for example. And that's not to belittle those or suggest that they're in any way easy. But they are, that they're more straightforward species in many respects, because they don't they don't fly. And they're, they're a single species, there isn't 20 of them to deal with. I mean, we're looking at least 20 Maybe 21 resident species is it I can't keep up with the numbers anymore in the UK 18 breeding species anyway, that, that you've got to have familiarity with, because you might encounter them. So at the very least, you need to have read about them and and and have an understanding of what they look like or what their ecology could be. And so you should we should, perhaps the way we should frame it is that if you can get your dormouse licence in perhaps 18 months, maybe we need to multiply that that that amount of hours by 18. You know, that the perhaps that's a better way of framing it. And I don't think that exactly works. But perhaps that sort of sets the expectation and the level of complexity different because if you compare a greater horseshoe bat to a whiskered bat, or a grey long haired bat, to a nocturnal bat, you know, the differences are almost as big as the differences in behaviour between the great crested Newt and the dormouse, which is ludicrous thing to say, but I mean, they really are very, very different creatures whilst being part of the same group.

Steve Roe: 29:14

We've touched on whether the licenced instructor is in need of an update with things like earned recognition coming out. So I'm going to leave that and I'm going to come on to the next question I had, which was hand netting. The thing that people get stuck up on is hand netting. And it seems it's a skill that's done less these days for various reasons. And it causes so many issues with people trying to get that training for their level two licence is, you know, is handlettered still relevant and how do people find the people who are doing that's that side of things, how do you get around it?

Richard Crompton: 29:46

It's a real challenge. And I do struggle as well because also the thing is, is that there are only so many accessible routes, you would only ever want to trap them search for a training exercise once a year, because you don't want the bats to become that I'm overly disturbed COVID and the extra restrictions of that, of course, have have an implication on that, because we're trying to minimise too much contact. So is it necessary to catch a colony that you've caught the previous three years sort of thing. And probably we've added we don't get into the, the challenges of, you know, minimising bat contact and bat training, because I think that training has its place. But also we do have to be mindful of the of the requirements as well. I think I'm a big fan of hand netting, I think it really has its place. A good example is to say, how do you know 100 bats coming out of a roof is a breeding colony. Now you can assume from the numbers, that you actually know that I remember catching up a large percentage of a big pipistrel colony a few years ago, and something over 70% of them were males, which is not what we were expecting, and then suddenly, you have to start questioning Well, is this actually a maternity colony? You know? And okay, so there are the tips like you might see or find babies. Obviously, that's that's a, that's a bit of a clincher. Perhaps even looking at social calls these days, that they'll give you some tips as well. But But do we actually always know? And simply by catching one or two, will often answer that question very, very easily. But it is a skill that's not used so much. So it is hard. And it's a case of finding these roots that are big enough to allow proportion to be caught. And doing it on that sort of basis. Because also there's it's it's a great way of learning handling, especially if you do pipistrelles, feisty, warm, you know, freshly warmed up, you know, newly emerged bats from a nice warm house roost or something like that, and getting them out from the bottom of the net and getting them into the bag and then getting them getting the NetBackup quickly, and really thinking about the process and being efficient, whilst at the same time treating the bats front window with the appropriate level of care is it's quite useful skill. But it is hard I struggle I am struggling to find enough roosts to teach those various skills on something also that you can do is when you get one is makes you got two nets. So you can get one that up, catch get the next room immediately somebody gets the gets the net straight back up in his place.

Steve Roe: 32:28

That's a good set. And I guess it goes back to that point you were making earlier if it's about making those connections, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And over the years, and as an estimate how many people tracking you've trained?

Richard Crompton: 32:41

I think it's through through bat licence training course and the associated courses, we're looking at about 350 380 Something in that order. Because some of some, some people have already got a licence when they come to us, that's been a surprise, some people weren't satisfied with the training that they had, or they felt that in hindsight, at some point, they've come to realise that they were never really properly trained, they came by signatures for their licence to easily that was a revelation for me and you know, 10 out of 10 to those people for, you know, having the presence of mind to address that. And some people are just upgrading from one class of licenced to another or perhaps adding handling or, you know, some cases even trying to add on the you know, the more advanced techniques as well, or just gaining experience towards them. That's that's that's been another surprise over the years is how many people come on the course really not expecting anything from it. And just really coming for some some more experience on their journey towards perhaps Perhaps wrapping on this netting or something like that.

Steve Roe: 33:44

Yeah. So out of the four different SN CEOs compare them, and they said that some of the other ones are slightly more hostile faces pragmatic, maybe how did that how did the file compare?

Richard Crompton: 33:55

So most of my experiences with is within England and Wales. And as it stands at the moment, it's relatively straightforward to get a licence in in England, if you send send your logbook fill in the form, if you meet the grade, and you've got the two signatures, you'll you'll get it and you'll usually get it inside of a few days. The difference in Wales is that they will really scrutinise the application, they'll really look at the logbook, and they'll make an informed decision on whether they think you've got enough experience. And actually, that's my preference. I prefer and I'm not just saying that because I'm based in Wales, I actually mostly trained people in England, not in Wales, but my preferences is that there, there should be a level of scrutiny. It's not good enough just to rely on two referees, in my opinion. The logbook is important, and it needs to be good and it needs to be thorough. And I think I know what I like to see in a logbook now and it's good rounded set of experience. It's good range of species, it's dealing with all the different types of roofs, you know, and it's not something that you can do, you know, in a short period of time, it needs thought it's important.

Steve Roe: 35:13

So just moving away slightly from the licencing side of thing. In the past, you've been a PCT trustee and have you've been very supportive of the organisation since then, what is it about PCT that you like?

Richard Crompton: 35:26

That, to me, the great thing about BCT is that it makes bats approachable to a very wide audience. And I'm not very good at this. And I think a lot of other bat specialists and bat enthusiasts are perhaps not as good as this as we ought to be. We're, I suppose geeks, to some extent, we like our gadgets, we like to see our bats, you know, and a lot of what we particularly get a kick out of doing is of is often not that approachable, or accessible to the general public. And so there's nothing better than anybody Welcome back work, and showing them their first button, enabling them to hear their first bout on about detector. And that's about the best thing in the world actually. And, and if we can start from that point of view, and I think that's something that BCT have been very good at championing is also engaging minority communities, people from different ethnicities, the passing train, and, and only people with disabilities and things like that, just making it more approachable to a wide audience, you know, and I think that I think that's brilliant. And then supporting people through, you know, through through their journeys through training courses, and conferences, and that kind of thing, you know, supporting, and, and enabling and what's the word, I'm looking for facilitating research and things like that, you know, finding gaps, thankless tasks, like the bat survey guidelines, you know, as in a meeting on the fourth edition, the bat survey guidelines, here we are, again, when was how many years? Is it now is 2006? Was that the first edition or something? And I literally said at one point, of course, if we could just train people properly and have confidence in their training, we actually wouldn't need any sort of vague guidelines. And I thought, oh, there's a there's a there's a there's a good point. And and I think everybody who's providing training or or supporting people through their, their learning journey, particularly towards a licence should really have that in mind. Because that that sort of answers all the problems, you know, if everybody's got a really good understanding of the why it's all about the why, you know, where are we going? And what what do we need to achieve with this information? Rather than just turning up and seeing if there's any bats there is before that point, it's understanding what what's that going to mean? And working out about, you know, the significance of levels of activity and stuff like that. So it's far from straightforward. But it would it would make make for a lot better survey reports as well. I think,

Steve Roe: 38:11

Richard, that's been really insightful. Thank you very much for coming on the show

Richard Crompton: 38:14

no problems. Thank you very much.

Steve Roe: 38:17

Massive thanks to Richard for giving us that insight. Despite the drizzle and for giving me my annual fix of lesser horseshoe bats. We've put a link in the show notes to Rich's training website, as well as his social media pages. And that brings us to the end of series five of Bat Chats. I really hope you've enjoyed listening to all of our guests this series, and the Bat Conservation stories being told, as a show, it really helps us reach more people. If you leave us a review about Bat Chat, either in your 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 bounce chance. Recording for series six a Bat Chat is already underway and will be coming later in the year. We're looking for local bats and conservation stories to feature on the podcast. So if you're working on a great bat 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. And you never know. Bat Chat might be making a visit to you in the near future. With the first signs of spring on the way we hope you all have a fantastic summer getting out there and enjoy seeing bats in the night sky. Bat Chat is an original podcast from the Bat Conservation Trust. The series producer and editor was me Steve Rowe. And I need to give a huge thanks to all of my guests this series because without them this show would have happened. And thanks as well to the communications team of BCT Joe Nunez Mino and Andrei Carrera de Costa for their fabulous support and promoting goes on social media and linking to the episodes on the obesity websites. 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.