NEW technology has revealed the hidden habitats of rare woodland bats near Taunton and Bridgwater.

Forestry England and the Bat Conservation Trust have identified nearly two million bat calls in the summer of 2019 in west country woodlands - including Elworthy and The Thickets, both near Taunton.

Both organisations wanted to test whether a low-cost static acoustic sensor, together with cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence-assisted sound identification tools, could help discover more about the bats living in the nation’s forests.

In Somerset, five species were discovered:

n Common pipistrelle

n Soprano pipistrelle

n Barbastelle

n Common noctule

n Greater horseshoe

Andrew Stringer, Hhead of environment at Forestry England, said: “This pilot has been extraordinary.

“It gave us more data than we’ve ever had to work with before and it is fantastic to see new technology being used for robust conservation science.

“Monitoring and evidence are the bedrock of conservation efforts, and it is tremendously exciting to look to the future and how these methods might give us crucial insight into how bat populations are performing in the long-term.”

According to Forestry England, bats are an indicator species. This means they help us to understand more about the wildlife we don’t see.

When their habitats are better understood, it helps researchers to understand how biodiversity and nature is faring more widely and provides an indicator of woodland health.

Carol Williams, director of conservation at the Bat Conservation Trust, said: “In only one year the Forestry England Bat Survey identified just under 2 million individual bat calls across 16 woodlands.

“This exceptional amount of data represents the largest dataset of bat records ever collected by the Bat Conservation Trust.

“With that wealth of data comes the potential for this approach to produce trends for some of our woodland bats for the first time.

“As some of our rarest bats, gaining this information will be a vital step in understanding their status and securing their future.

“It will also be possible to use the wider bat data as an indicator of the condition of woodland.

“We are delighted by what our collaboration has produced at this early stage.”

The success of the pilot project provides opportunities for bodies such as Forestry England to monitor the change in status and condition of woodland environments where bats thrive.