Re: Bat Bridges

I don't know much about bats admittedly, but the cost of the overall construction of the road is much much more than the cost of the bat bridge.   I can undestand that  some people will question and ridicule the cost of the construction of the bridge and also why spending so much money is justifiable for a few bats.  In my opinion if conservation was cheap then that would be great but it isn't, it all costs money.   The question is how much do you feel about conservation in the first place.  There are many of us who want to enjoy the animals that share this planet and continue to do so in 30-40 years time.  We have a duty, in my opinion, being a species that has a greater ability in realisation to change our circumstances and to preserve other species around us.   Simply put humans have had a greater impact on this earth than any other, purely because of evolution.  The difference is we realise and understand this but we often choose not to accept it or in some cases do anything about it. 

.......It's not all about us

A bit late, but I just picked up this thread. Info from a local bat conservator on another forum "As for the Cornish Dobwalls bypass bat bridges, plural, SX210650, I asked locally about them. The environmental assessment established that it was going to cut right across a well established flight route for Horseshoes. The numbers using that route are significant, whatever the hard evidence of numbers. It wasn't just an uprooted hedge, it was an uprooted hill...Two bat bridges were specified to give protected crossings without the bats having to swoop down to road level for protection from predators and get hit by vehicles. A bat cannot echolocate anything moving fast. While the counted bat numbers may be "low", any increased mortality due to the road excavation is likely to wipe out local bat roosts of this rare UK species." I believe the original article was in the Daily Mail. Nuff said. Batmanrog