Promoting bat populations in Albacete

El Albacete City Hall in collaboration with the Regional Government of Castilla La Mancha e Ideas MedioAmbiental is carrying out actions to promote bat (and bird) populations in parks and gardens in the city of Albacete.

And the thing is that Albacete, which counts in its shield with a bat as its main symbol, could not be left out of these actions in favor of bats that are being carried out by other cities such as Torrejón de Ardoz, Leganes, Paterna, Zamora and even his own Madrid in its Manzanares River.

Why promote bat populations?

As we know, bats play important roles in ecosystems as insect pest controllers, since they feed on thousands of insects every night. Among these insects are the mosquitoes that bother us so much in summer. Studies are also being carried out to assess the ability of bats to control processionaries (by controlling their moths) and other pest species.

In addition, bats are also seriously threatened due to several factors: low reproductive rate, restricted distribution, specificity of their habitats and, above all, the loss and degradation of hunting habitats. Not to mention pollution and the loss of shelters and inconvenience to them.

What measures are being developed?

In order to counteract this loss of natural shelters, the Albacete City Hall has chosen to place shelter boxes for bats in various green areas of the city. An action aimed at providing artificial shelters in our public parks to offer tree bats and fissuricultural bats new shelters to spend summer and even winter.

La Regional Government of Castilla La Mancha it has also contributed its grain of sand with the transfer of some of the installed nest boxes. The nest boxes have been located on tree trunks (without damaging them) and at a minimum height of 4 m, oriented to open areas and in the locations shown in the following map.

How does Ideas MedioAmbiental participate?

Environmental Ideas could not be left out of this initiative and has provided technical advice in selecting the locations of the nest boxes. To this end, we have based on the data collected in the study that we present in the III Conference on the Natural Environment of Albacete What do we call Contribution to the knowledge of bats (O. Chiroptera) and proposals to improve their habitat in green areas of Albacete and the “Abelardo Sánchez” park, the “Linear Park”, the “Tree Festival” and the “Botanical Garden of Castilla La Mancha” have been chosen

We have also provided several shelter-boxes made by the students of the I.E.S. Bonifacio Sotos de Casas Ibanez with our modest financial contribution for the purchase of materials.

After the installation of the boxes, as part of our monitoring and dissemination program of Bats from Albacete and Castilla La Mancha we will continue to review and control the occupancy rate of these shelter-boxes to continue to deepen our knowledge of these exciting mammals.