Pencelli’s Hidden Roost — 50 Years of the Vincent Wildlife Trust

In this episode of BatChat, we explore the 50-year history of the Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT) and its vital role in bat conservation. I speak with CEO Lucy Rogers about her role with VWT, the organisation's founding by the Hon. Vincent Weir and its ongoing efforts to protect our rarest bat populations here in the UK. With Jenny O'Neil and Phil Morgan we discuss the importance of community involvement, collaboration with local bat groups, and the strategic initiatives that VWT is implementing to enhance bat habitats. This conversation reflects on past achievements while addressing current environmental challenges, emphasizing the commitment required to ensure that bat populations thrive for future generations.

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Chapters

• 0:05 Celebrating 50 Years of VWT
• 1:33 A Visit to Usk Valley
• 4:28 Lucy Rogers on VWT's History
• 6:32 Understanding the Role of VWT
• 9:20 Collaboration with Bat Conservation Trust
• 10:36 Ensuring Future for Bats
• 12:35 Events for the 50th Anniversary
• 14:14 Meet the Bat Conservation Team
• 17:08 The Story of Pencathley Mill
• 19:55 Maintaining Bat Reserves
• 22:32 The Role of Volunteers
• 29:00 New Projects and Future Goals
• 30:36 Getting Involved with VWT
• 32:13 Sounds of the Lesser Horseshoe Bats

Transcript

Steve Roe:
[0:00] The Vincent Wildlife Trust is 50 years old this year, but who are VWT and what

Steve Roe:
[0:05] Have they done for our bats? We're going to find out in this episode of Bat Chat!

Steve Roe:
[0:18] Welcome to another episode of a brand new series of the Bat Conservation Trust's award-winning podcast, Bat Chat. I'm your host, Steve Rowe, and this is the second episode of Series 7, which means from now until the spring of 2026, a new episode will be released every other Wednesday. Last time, we heard from our president, Chris Packham, at the Natural History Museum. This week, we're back out on location. The Vinson Wildlife Trust is not affiliated with the other local wildlife trusts that you might be familiar with. It's an independent organisation which has been at the forefront of wildlife conservation using sound scientific research and developing innovative wildlife conservation action that have had a real impact on species populations. And this year it's celebrating its 50th anniversary since being founded by the late Honourable Vincent Weir, who was a highly accomplished naturalist and a philanthropist. So this summer I travelled to the Usk Valley in the Brecon Beacons to catch up with the chief exec of the charity in this 50th year to see what it's currently up to and speak with one of its reserves officers to find out what a typical day of being a bat officer might look like. In this interview we also hear from the chap who discovered the roost of rare bats and persuaded Vincent Weir to purchase the site and save the roost from being lost.

Steve Roe:
[1:33] After we chatted we headed round the back of the mill to sit by the river listening to the bats emerging from the roost and out into the Usk Valley, so stay tuned for that.

Steve Roe:
[1:42] So let's travel to Penkethli. It's a warm mid-July evening. The entrance to the field is well hidden in a hedgerow that driving through the village would mean that you would never know that at the far end of the meadow is a disused watermill. Standing picturesque amongst meadow cranesbill and tall grasses, we sit in front of this building with its rough weathered stone walls and dark grey slate roofs, steeply angled of various pitches and slightly sagging in that way that old rural buildings often have. A couple of small openings, one a shuttered upper level window and another deep set doorway in the roof hinting that this entrance isn't for humans. A metal plaque sits proudly on the stone wall at chest height, with information for any curious visitors that the building is a protected bat roost and must not be disturbed. A low stone wall runs by where we're sat, covered in lichen. Behind the mill, mature trees line the sky, outlining the course of the river usk. Lucy Rogers is the CEO of the organisation which owns this building and is sat beside me, and I began by asking Lucy to tell us about her role and how long she's been at VWT.

Lucy Rogers:
[2:47] So, yeah, as you say, it's a beautiful site and I'll just reflect you on how lucky I am to have this job. So I've been at VWT for nearly eight years, seven and a half years. And my role is really to keep the organisation running, set the strategic direction with the trustees and make sure we get enough funding in and deliver our strategy. And so that is not just the bats that we're here to talk about tonight, but also a whole carnival programme as well. and lots of exciting work on carnivals.

Steve Roe:
[3:20] And one of the reasons, apart from coming to do the count this evening, one of the reasons we've come over is because this year Fins and Wildlife Trust has turned 50. So tell us a bit about the history and what you guys have got planned for this 50th anniversary.

Lucy Rogers:
[3:32] So, yes, so incredibly, we're halfway through 2025 already, but although we're not technically 50 till November, and we're trying to celebrate in a number of ways. So we've had a lot of events that are badged as 50 years this year. Including some blogs and some webinars and we spoke at the hay festival as well which was really good and later on in the year we're going to be launching our 50-year impact report so that's a chance for us to look back and celebrate what we've achieved over 50 years which is actually really amazing when you look back and you think how small we are as an organization but also it's a time for reflection and looking forward because although we've achieved a lot, which shouldn't be underestimated it's a time of great environmental challenge and we need to look ahead for the next 50 years and plan what we're going to do and how we're going to protect wildlife in the future.

Steve Roe:
[4:28] And for listeners who have never heard of VWC, you know, they've probably heard of the local wildlife trust. Just tell us about what Vincent Wildlife Trust is and how it sits alongside those other wildlife trusts.

Lucy Rogers:
[4:38] So, yeah, it's a confusing name and we ought to change it. So it's named after the founder, Vincent Weir, formed it as a private wildlife organisation, not even a charity back in 1975, but it was a private organisation for him to do his own conservation. And he was an incredible person. I never met him, unfortunately, but he was a businessman and a good naturalist as well. And it turns out a really generous philanthropist. And what he did was set up an organisation and staff it with expert ecologists who could investigate what he was concerned about. So he started off being worried about the decline in otters in the 1970s. And he got people together to count otters, so started nationwide surveys of otters. And during the 70s, that really led to a lot more information about why the otters were declining and also actually eventually turned around their decline so that they've actually recovered. And today they're found in every river catchment in England. And then in the 1990s and 1980s, he got interested in bats and why there was a decline in bats. And he was looking at greater and lesser horseshoe bats in the UK and Ireland and.

Lucy Rogers:
[5:59] And why their numbers had crashed and again he got together ecologists who could look into it in more detail and he found out that it was to do with a lack of roosting sites and maternity roosts and pesticides affecting their food so he set about purchasing being a rich man he set about purchasing these old beautiful old buildings like the the building we can see today and that was the beginning of a long and successful story in turning around and reversing the decline in these species.

Steve Roe:
[6:33] So you said you've been doing the role for the last eight years you know how did what what were you doing before that how did you land the role and just tell us a bit about your day-to-day job okay

Lucy Rogers:
[6:41] So i before i've always worked in conservation i started off in mammal research so i was working on badgers and tb way back when and then i worked in the wildlife trust for many years the Real Wildlife Trust. And so I was doing conservation delivery. So I sort of started off in conservation science, then leapt into conservation delivery. And that combination of skills helped me get the job at Vincent Wildlife Trust, which is unique in combining research and conservation delivery. So we create our own evidence and work with a lot of universities and share PhD students. So we research into the mammals that we're looking into and then we apply those solutions to our own conservation delivery, which makes us quite unique, really, especially as we're so small. I mean, there's only 23 of us and up to 2024, there was under 20. So my day job is really keeping a lot of plates spinning and making sure that...

Lucy Rogers:
[7:46] The team have what they need to deliver the strategy, that we've got enough funding, that we are starting off new projects, we've got enough vehicles. It can sometimes be very operational like that, but there's also looking at the strategy and also increasingly with VWT, we used to be very inward looking and insular, partly because we were more of a research organization than conventional NGO. But latterly, we are much more outward facing. So some of my work is is more about flying the flag for vwt and talking to others and raising our profile what.

Steve Roe:
[8:22] Sort of areas do you cover because you don't cover all that species do you just tell us about why you only cover certain

Lucy Rogers:
[8:27] Ones so um we've been because of our secure funding from the legacy that vincent left us we have always been able to pick uh the species that we wanted to and and um so they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily species that it's easy to get funding for. And we've tended to focus on unpopular or uncharismatic species or species other people aren't working on. And on the bat side, that tends to be the two horseshoe bat species in the UK and Ireland, and also some rare woodland bats. So that's Beckstines and Barberstiles. But we're increasingly, extending that and reviewing our areas of specialism. And I think in the future, we will be looking at other bat species. But we've always been a small organisation, so we found it best to focus rather than be spread too thinly.

Steve Roe:
[9:20] So in terms of the Bat Conservation Trust, just tell us a bit about how the two organisations sit alongside each other then.

Lucy Rogers:
[9:27] OK, so what we're able to do as VWT is complement. We work in partnership for, I think, everything we do, But we're very good at complementing other organisations. So, for example, Bat Conservation Trust are more lobbying and campaigning and awareness raising. And we are more research and kind of direct research leading to conservation on the ground. So, for instance, we own bat roosts and manage bat roosts, whereas BCT don't. And there tends to be, I mean, there's definitely overlap, but we also work on different species, we tend to. But we all get on really well and we're doing a joint project together at the moment on Beckstein Zimbabar Stiles. So we work very closely with each other.

Steve Roe:
[10:16] Vincent bought the first bat reserve back in 1980, which at that time was a bit of a small Devon farm with surrounding land, including a cave. That became the first bat reserve. further roosts were acquired in the 1990s, which means that VWT secured 50% of the British greater horseshoe population.

Lucy Rogers:
[10:35] It's an incredible figure.

Steve Roe:
[10:37] It is, and that's doubled over recent decades. So looking ahead, what sort of intervention do you think will be needed to continue to safeguard the species?

Lucy Rogers:
[10:44] So I think what we're concentrating on at the moment, so obviously we're at a lesser horseshoe bat roost and with lesser horseshoe bats, We look after about 10% of their UK population. It's 25% in Ireland. And I think at one time we would have thought perhaps we need an exit strategy and the bats are OK and maybe we can withdraw. But I think increasingly we see that we need to keep looking after them and we will certainly keep looking after the roost in perpetuity. I think what we need to do next is really look at the landscape in more detail. So we're just about to start a project building bat towers in the landscape in Wales. And these are small structures and they will link up the landscape and make it more permeable to bats. So as the bats in these structures in our current bat roosts are still expanding And we know that they're expanding at three and a half times a greater rate than in non-VWT roosts for lesser horseshoe bats.

Lucy Rogers:
[11:53] And they're very slow at reproduction. So it's likely that they'll carry on increasing in population size for some time to come. But we also need to be looking at a landscape scale more than we have done and perhaps working with landowners adjacent to our roosts, but also within the landscape as a whole. And particularly with the onset of climate change and really making sure that as there might be other species coming in and competing that we do everything we can to make sure these populations are in... Good state and are resilient to climate change in their reefs but also in the landscape.

Steve Roe:
[12:32] So Lucy just tell us what you've got lined up for this 50th anniversary then.

Lucy Rogers:
[12:35] So we've got lots of events that are badged us the 50th we've done the Hay Festival we've done some walks and back walks and some webinars and blogs and so on we've got the Lesser Horseshoe Handbook the much-awaited Lesser Horseshoe Handbook has been revised with more details of greater horseshoe bats and that'll be out uh in the autumn this year plus a pine martin conservation handbook as well and then the biggie that we're doing this year is a 50-year impact report so that will be coming out and launched in november and that's looking back over the impact we've had over the last 50 years which um is great to to look back on and reflect and it obviously goes back way before the current staff at vwt were there so we're looking back at the the early start with things like otters and water bowls but we're also taking the time to look forward and reflect on where we'll be over the next 50 years and what we can do to keep the conservation going as we move forward.

Steve Roe:
[13:41] Fantastic, Lucy Rogers thank you very much.

Lucy Rogers:
[13:42] Thank you.

Steve Roe:
[13:43] So as you heard there from Lucy the Lesser Horseshoe Conservation Handbook that she mentioned is out now along with that 50-year impact report and you can see those using the links in the show notes. So now as we head back to the meadow, the light has just started to change as dusk begins to slowly arrive on the horizon and the air begins to cool a fraction and the evening birdsong builds as we now hear from Jenny O'Neill, who is the Lesser Horseshoe Project Officer for VWT, having joined as a bat conservation officer, and Phil Morgan from Breckknot Bat Group.

Steve Roe:
[14:14] So it was great hearing from Lucy there and now we're being joined by Jenny O'Neill who's the bat conservation officer at VWT and Phil Morgan from Bretknock Bat Group. So guys just tell us a bit about why we're here today I guess you know what are we doing here?

Jenny O'Neil:
[14:31] So we're at Pencathley Mill today in the Esk Valley so we're within Brecon Beacons National Park and this is one of the VWT reserves, one of our lesser horseshoe bat reserves. So we've got a really large maternity roost of lesser horseshoe bats here and the bats also use the building over the winter as well so it's also a hibernation roost. So we're here to count the bats today. We've already done two counts in June and that data will then feed into the National Bat Monitoring Programme and we're here just to do an extra camp with you today so

Steve Roe:
[15:10] Just tell us a bit about the reserve that we're sat in just describe it to list us then so we've obviously got the building but then also just tell us about the surrounding landscape

Jenny O'Neil:
[15:18] Um sure so it's a really gorgeous old building it's a um old watermill and granary um i'm not sure exactly how old but over 100 years old um so it's a pretty special building and then we've got at the front of the building we've got this uh large kind of meadow area tree lines um around the edge um and then the wider landscape is um well i'm sure you saw as you drove in it's really gorgeous around here lots of hedgerows lots of woodland and we're we're in the esk river valley so really lovely sheltered valley and all the kind of river habitat along there so

Steve Roe:
[15:55] When was the reserve acquired and who was it acquired from then i guess There's

Phil Morgan:
[16:02] A bit of a story to the acquisition. It was found... Members of Brecknock Bat Group. In those days, we used to go along to agricultural shows and town fates and things like that. And we had a sort of display with pins in it, and people would come up and engage with us about bats, because we were still in the very early days of bat conservation in the early 1980s. And this particular site, Pemkathleen Mill, a gentleman came up to me at Brecon Fete and said, oh, I'm a tenant of a little mill near Penkethley and he said, we've got some bats and would you like to come and have a look? And I said, yeah, of course, you know, please.

Phil Morgan:
[17:00] So, literally made an appointment with him there and then and came on over the next day.

Phil Morgan:
[17:08] And that was in May 1990. And there were 15 lesser horseshoe bats in the roof space.

Phil Morgan:
[17:20] And nothing much happened with it for a few years. It was owned by a family trust. And as I say, the guy that contacted us was a tenant. And he passed away. And I think basically the trust hadn't done anything with it because they respected his tenancy. Anyway, eventually they decided to go for planning permission. So we used to come over because it was degrading and we would stand here with a newspaper to just sort of show this is the date and this is how it's looking today. And we conceived a plan with Vincent Weir to try and acquire the site. But first we had to persuade the National Park Authority not to grant planning permission for development. And it was quite life-affirming to be there at the committee meeting where the councillors were outnumbered by the number of bat workers who were looking at them menacingly. And indeed they refused the planning permission, and that gave the chance for the VWT to step in and talk to the trustees about acquiring the site for a reserve. And it's just gone from strength to strength.

Steve Roe:
[18:40] And just tell us, because it's in good nick now, obviously it's had a lot of work done, what was it like back then?

Phil Morgan:
[18:45] It wasn't that much different. There have been subtle changes. The doors and windows were somewhat rustic. We did actually get to the point where there were literally about 20 slates left on the roof because they were blowing off in the various scales we seem to get around here and but the bats were very tenacious despite the lack of roof cover they were still here and so yeah it's it's a very tasteful if that's the right word retention of the original structure I mean I can show you photographs and it doesn't look that different but yeah it's certainly got a solid roof now.

Steve Roe:
[19:34] Jenny, just tell us about how often you guys maintain the building then. Does it need, you know, slates repairing quite often? Or is it, you know, because it's not lived in, not used in, it's a fairly sheltered area now, you know, is it self-sustaining?

Jenny O'Neil:
[19:46] Yes, so all the reserves, obviously, ideally we don't want to be having to visit

Jenny O'Neil:
[19:50] the sites too often. But we do undertake regular maintenance at all the sites. So whether that's vegetation and making sure access points remain clear or clearing out gutters, making minor repairs to the building. That type of thing and then along with that we'd be looking at any kind of additional enhancements that might be needed so um that might be things internally like adding more roosting areas for bats more um areas where they can perch um or at some of our reserves we've added predator proofing so some of the entrances so as well as the the kind of expected maintenance there might be other things that are needed you know throughout the year so they keep us quite busy yeah they keep the bat team quite busy yeah and

Steve Roe:
[20:36] You mentioned vegetation clearance then i mean the roost access points on this building at the rear near they fall out onto the river do the bats then commute along the river or do they actually forage over this grassland meadow that we've got that we're sat in now

Jenny O'Neil:
[20:48] What i've seen with the bats um leaving at the back of the building they tend to head straight onto the river and but i would imagine that the meadow is used and the surrounding areas are likely to be used as well but when I've done camps the building they tend to move straight off onto the river yeah

Steve Roe:
[21:04] And, obviously, Phil comes down with other volunteers from Brecknock Bat Group to do the MBMP count. Why do you use volunteers rather than install something like one of these electronic bat counters that you can buy now? What's the advantage of using people like Phil?

Jenny O'Neil:
[21:18] Well, it's a great experience for volunteers to come along.

Phil Morgan:
[21:23] I was going to say, we've sort of ducked out to a degree from the point of view of Brecknock Bat Group because we've got so many less horse maternity routes. And Vincent Wildlife Trust have developed to the point where they have their own team sort of thing and team of volunteers. And although we interact, frankly, I'm out very often on the same nights BWT staff here, I'm out counting somebody else's bets. I should stay home and I've probably got some of my own. But the beauty of the volunteers is that they have the local link, I suppose. And they have their finger on the pulse locally, which is great for a nationalisation, I would imagine.

Jenny O'Neil:
[22:12] We've got just an amazing group of volunteers. So we have coordinators who look after the sites and then volunteers who come along to help with the counts. It's also extra visits to the site and keeping an eye on what's going on and looking at kind of changes in back behaviour. If, you know, they might notice something that needs doing on the site that...

Jenny O'Neil:
[22:32] We might not have picked up since our last visit so it's great to have people on site who know the area and it's just a fantastic experience as well i actually first became involved with vwt as a volunteer so um i was coming along to some of these camps before before i started my current role and yeah it's just amazing coming to these really gorgeous places and seeing these huge numbers about so yeah that was an amazing experience for me and it's nice to share that as well with other people and i think most of our volunteers are really keen and and happy to join in and we really appreciate all their help so we definitely couldn't manage them all on our own so yeah and

Steve Roe:
[23:09] Just remind me what was the count was at the last mvmp count you did how many did you have out a couple of weeks

Jenny O'Neil:
[23:14] Ago so at penkechley mill we had um 450 adults this year so that's quite an increase on last year so um yeah the the numbers have been doing really well here since well really year on year since it was first discovered so it's been increasing I

Steve Roe:
[23:31] Was going to say how long, you know you started off with 15 how long did it take to get from 15 to the numbers you've got now then?

Phil Morgan:
[23:35] It was probably 10 years to get to sort of 100 but we were seeing increases here as we were with other lesser horse and maternity roosts along this river system we did do some radio tracking and we were able to confirm and this roost is linked to others that we know of. It's like they've all collectively expanded together. But a major, major influence on that was that the Vincent Wildlife Trust had acquired the strategic sites. And without those, it's just sort of, have exploded and that's not quite the right term but they have they've just blossomed and expanded out of this this this narrow corridor if you like and and they're up all the other valleys and spilling over into other river systems now like the wai and and the itawi and um so it's very much been a a seedbed if you like for for the expansion of the population locally and um yeah we're very pleased about that but it couldn't have done couldn't have happened without that input from vincent wildlife trust i

Steve Roe:
[24:52] Mean obviously it's the river there that's the the main connecting corridor but just for listeners who aren't familiar with the area just describe the valley then you know when you say all these are the strategic sites how many miles are we talking roughly what sort of area

Phil Morgan:
[25:05] The the headwaters uh for the river system are about sort of 600 meters and approximately 30 meters to the west of where we are here. And it then flows around Down gathering pace, there's a reservoir, which is known as Usk Reservoir, just west of the town of Tricastle. And then the river Meanders down to the town of Brecon, and then on to Cracowell and Abergavenny, which is about, again, 30 kilometres to the east. Eventually, it flows down through Monmouthshire and exits into the Severn Estuary at Newport.

Steve Roe:
[25:48] But just before we go and start counting these bats then, just tell us a bit more about Bretnacht Bat Group. What are you guys up to at the moment?

Phil Morgan:
[25:55] Yeah, we're not like a traditional bat group. We don't have lots of members. We don't produce magazines. You don't have to pay to join us because you don't get anything. But we've always been a project-based group. We started in the very early 80s. I think we were probably the second bat group in Wales, maybe Pembrokeshire got started before us and we were always focused on projects I was just discussing with Jenny earlier on about chance and choice and we didn't make a conscious choice that we were going to start looking for lesser horseshoes it was just they kept coming up and so it's been very much a focus for our group but we do do other things we've had a door bentons project on since 1993 we've been ringing Dol Benton's bats and we've had a recovery of a 21 year old adult so we've been doing some cutting edge stuff but we don't really crow about it we're not on Facebook or any other social media and as I said the members are sort of we don't even get to the pub anymore we're just out just doing bat work I feel like you get a cup of tea in a sandwich.

Steve Roe:
[27:18] Fantastic. And then Jenny, just tell us a bit about your role. What does your day-to-day job look like?

Jenny O'Neil:
[27:24] Quite a big part of the BAT team's work is looking after the reserves. So we've got 37 reserves across England, Wales and Ireland. So I think 12 of those are in Wales. So a fair amount of our work is looking after the reserves, managing those, carrying out the counts in the summer and then hibernation counts in the winter. And then we've got some other projects going on so um we've got some kind of long-term ringing projects trapping and radio tracking that we do with the national becksteins and barber style project yes there's a number of the other projects going on in the background as well um we've actually got a new project just starting up which is landscape for lessers and that is nature network fund that's going to be going on for the next three years so that's basically looking at um back concert lesser horseshoe conservation across wales and we're going to be building some new bat roosts so that's going to be building roosts in areas where less horseshoes are impacted so that might be by greater horseshoes coming into their roosts or by loss of roosts for other reasons so hopefully we're going to be able to help with that and also looking at enhancing some of the known roosts so that project's just starting up so that's going to be taking up quite a lot of our time I think coming up we're also so that's a So we've just completed a

Lucy Rogers:
[28:47] Big project called Horseshoes heading east, which was looking at, well, enhancing the colonisation of greater horseshoe bats moving east. And so that was...

Lucy Rogers:
[29:00] Purchase and repair and restoration of a number of roosts in the landscape so that as the bats are naturally colonising eastwards they've got somewhere to go and we've also got a natura and biff project which is part of the big partnership project in wales where we're working on barberstel bats and finding new sites for them and working with landowners and, arborist to enhance sites for those very rare bats yeah.

Jenny O'Neil:
[29:31] Yeah that's right we're also um hopefully towards the end of the year we're preparing a horseshoe bat training course so that's going to be coming out later in the year which is really exciting and then there's also the updated lesser horseshoe handbook that's been going on in the background yes so yeah henry scofield's been working away on that with our input and hoping that's going to be out you know pretty soon later in the year so yeah there's um there's been lots going on and

Steve Roe:
[30:01] Then you mentioned just then that you had greaters moving in and you needed to deal with that so for listeners who aren't aware about the conflict between greatest and lessers just tell us a bit about that then

Jenny O'Neil:
[30:13] Sure, so there's been some evidence certainly in some of our reserves where we've had greater horseshoes moving into less horseshoe roosts and that's seemed to have some impacts on the roosts, whether that's been impacting their breeding or causing less horseshoes to abandon

Jenny O'Neil:
[30:33] the roost or certainly reducing the numbers. So we're not exactly sure what the interaction is at the moment whether there's some kind of physical interaction or it's you know the less horses are just choosing not to use those roosts once they move in but obviously with the populations of both species recovering in some areas there's going to be some conflict there because there's going to be some competition for roost sites so yeah there's certainly going to be some sites where we need to look at that and either look at access points and whether both species can access or whether they can be separate in the same roost or providing new roosts to support lesser horseshoes that are no longer able to use those roosts yeah so

Steve Roe:
[31:14] If people are listening to this and thinking oh this sounds great and i want to get involved as a volunteer and either come and help count some of these roosts or get involved in some of the other stuff like you know meadow management you know how is there a way for them to do that

Jenny O'Neil:
[31:25] Yes absolutely there's loads of great opportunities within some wildlife trust so like like i was saying earlier we've just finished up our emergence counts but we've got the great horseshoe camps going on for the next couple of weeks um there's all kinds of kind of practical reserve management tasks that we run through the year um lots of good opportunities so um you can check the website we've got a great um volunteer engagement officer laura who um who helps out with all the volunteers so um you can check the website and i'm sure you can share some details for us yeah

Steve Roe:
[31:57] Absolutely we'll stick that in the show notes so phil lucy and jenny thank you very much

Jenny O'Neil:
[32:02] Thank you

Steve Roe:
[32:04] And once again, a huge thanks to Lucy, Jenny and Phil for those interviews. Again, links to various Vinson Wildlife Trust content is available in the show notes.

Steve Roe:
[32:13] After those chats, Jenny and I set up some detectors and microphones to record the sounds of the lesser horseshoe roost emerging at dusk. In this final clip, you'll hear the sound of the river flowing behind us. We placed some high-sensitive microphones at the edge of the grill, protecting the roost entrance, and as the bats increase in number, you'll hear the sound of their tiny wings blowing air across the microphones, before we turn on the detectors and hear the classic warble of their echolocation. So congratulations to VWC which turned 50 this month. I'll be back in two weeks time to take you to the Yorkshire Dales to visit a very special lime kiln.

Dave Anderson:
[36:13] And we started looking