Woodland Bat Roost Project at Sydenham Hill Wood

It’s great news for bats at Sydenham Hill Wood, London Wildlife Trust’s Nature Reserve on the borders of Southwark and Lewisham.

The Woodland Bat Roost Project, funded by the SITA Trust through the landfill communities fund with 10 per cent match funding from the Dulwich Community Council and support from Lewisham Council is designed to meet UK, London and Southwark biodiversity action plan targets.

It is a three year project which began earlier this year and has already reaped benefits in terms of our knowledge of how these endangered mammals use the woodland site.

Sydenham Hill Wood comprises nine hectares of ancient woodland combined with former Victorian gardens, making it a highly unusual and attractive site in the middle of urban London.

As part of the Project, volunteers have been trained how to survey for bats using electronic bat detectors, which pick up the bats’ ultrasonic echolocation calls and convert them to noises we can hear. This allows us to build up a picture of the bat species using the wood. So far there are records of common and soprano pipistrelles, noctules (which are in decline nationally) at least one species of the myotis bats, and brown long-eared bats (the only site in Southwark where these have been recorded)

Possible roosting places have been identified, and these include a disused railway tunnel which was formerly part of the Nunhead to Crystal Palace High Level route which was closed in 1954.

A major part of the Project will be building works inside the railway tunnel to provide suitable conditions for bats to hibernate (cool, steady temperatures and no draughts). At the moment the tunnel is probably too draughty for more than a few bats, but the work aims to provide a safe and successful hibernation site. Bat boxes and bat bricks will be incorporated into the internal design to provide extra roosting opportunities, and more bat boxes will be put up on suitable trees in the wood itself.

Once the work has been done and the bat boxes put up, surveying will continue on a regular basis to monitor the success of the Project.

If you are interested in Sydenham Hill Wood or the Bat Project, please contact: Colin Higgins, the Project Manager on 0208 699 5698