February 21, 2024 • 24 mins
Send us a Text Message with what batty adventures you’ve been up to this summer!
S5E54 This week Steve sits down with Joanne Hodgkins, nature conservation advisor for the National Trust. Sitting in the hot August sunshine at The Vyne near Basingstoke, Steve finds out how the National Trust cares not just for it's special places, but for it's special wildlife. Jo explains how bats are now a day to day part of her role at the Trust, how bats are at the centre of most projects on their Estates and how bat groups are an important part of the story.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve Roe (00:07):
This is BatChat, the podcast from the Bat
Conservation Trust, where we'retaking you out into the field to
discover the world of batconservation.
Welcome back, folks, you'relistening to BatChat, which is
for anyone with an interest inthe enigmatic mammals filling
(00:28):
our skies at night. I'm SteveRoe professionally, I'm an
ecologist and in my spare timeas well as doing this podcast,
I'm a trustee for the BatConservation Trust. This is the
penultimate episode of thisseries the sound you can hear
from a microphone which I placednext to an artificial tree hole,
which is home to over 60 lies asbats and as well as the roost
chatter. You can hear thescuffling sounds as they're
(00:48):
leaving the bat box which ismade from a piece of tree trunk.
This particular box is locatedon a national trust property in
the Midlands, but in themorning, I'm off down to a
property called The Vyne nearBasingstoke to meet the person
who is essentially in charge ofthe largest number of bat roosts
in the country.
(01:13):
Where we're currently in thenearly the middle of August, and
I'm down in Hampshire just northof Basingstoke with Jo Hodgkins
Jo's finished work for the day,and she's got to get back to the
other white. So thank you fortaking time out and staying
behind to do the interview.
You're the National Trust natureconservation adviser for London
in the southeast. How did yourcareer path get you to this
(01:35):
amazing job?
Jo Hodgkins (01:38):
Oh gosh, yeah.
Well, it started off way backwhen I was at school, really
just having a passion for natureand parents who, luckily are
interested in nature andwildflowers as well. Yeah, so I
actually my first roles with thewildlife trusts are
volunteering, working, doingwildlife site surveys and land
management advice to landownersbefore managing a liquor record
(02:00):
Centre in local government, andthen deciding I really, really
needed to back out again, on theground with people delivering
for nature. So yeah, luckily, Igot a project post with the
National Trust, which led to afull time job and that was 22
years ago.
Steve Roe (02:18):
We've got you on because you, monks, many things
you do you do a lot of the batwork. How often do you encounter
bats in your day to day job? Andhave you ended up doing a lot of
bad stuff with the trust?
Jo Hodgkins (02:30):
Yeah, well, the the trust, as well as having all our
land and estates, obviously,lots of old buildings, and most
of them are bat roost. Weencounter them through survey
when we're doing our day to daywork, like repairs, conservation
work on buildings tree work. Butwe did do a sample a few years
(02:51):
ago, to look at how often wemight encounter about so so we
took a sample of buildings anddetermined that had batteries or
not, and worked out actually isabout 95% of Trust buildings
have that roosts or batpotential land that she use for
foraging. So we have a workingassumption that on every
project, every builtconservation project we do, it's
(03:14):
going to involve bats. So therole I have as a regional nature
conservation advisor means thatI'm the person who often advises
on the process to get sitesurveyed, what's required
licencing and those kinds ofthings working with external
contractors. So we have goodnetworks of external partners
and contractors we work with aswell, because I couldn't
(03:34):
possibly do the groundwork forall the projects that are
involving bats at any one time.
So it's sort of advisory from mypoint of view. So probably in
the average week, I would sayI'm probably dealing with bats
or other protective species orcalls about them probably every
other day, something like that.
(03:55):
And there's a project going onall the time. In in our region,
probably double figures ofprojects at the minute involving
bats, but I actually got intobats. Through working with the
trust, I had kind of a casualinterest in bats. Before I came
to work for the trust, and itstarted getting interested in
joining a local back group. ButI didn't have that urge to kind
(04:18):
of be a volunteer batteriesvisitor and call around in
people's locks. It wasn't untilcoming to the trust and actually
working with someone who was abit of a mentor, guy called
David Bullock with that, whosort of challenged me to get my
licence get my rabies jobsbecause I'm a bit needle phobic
or I was several years ago. Andif I did that, I could go on
(04:43):
some mining, some mine checksfor horseshoes in
Gloucestershire. So thatchallenge was kind of enough
really. And I that's how I kindof got into it and from then on
just got much more activelyinvolved in doing that work and
more of this little survey andresearch side of it and stuff at
the trust as well, sort of usingmy licence to get access to some
(05:06):
really fabulous old buildingsrather than sort of dusty lofts
on big, big mansion lofts withroosts in so yeah, I'm very
lucky.
Steve Roe (05:15):
And you, you said the working assumption that all
trust buildings, or at least 95%of them have roofs. And when you
put that into context, the truststones over 50,000 buildings, so
the trust probably is thelargest single roof tender in
England, Wales and NorthernIreland, clearly, you've got a
huge responsibility for ourspecies and populations. What
sort of work does the NationalTrust do to help conserve that
(05:37):
species? And? And yeah, whatsort of what sort of
conservation projects do youhave to think about? The trust
obviously has to update its beltand things like fire eggs? How
often do bats crop up and cause?
Not issues, but complicationsfor projects? I guess?
Jo Hodgkins (05:53):
Yeah, it's, it's in the vast majority of projects,
really, we, we have within thetrust of a cohort building
surveyors who lead a lot of theconservation work on our built
heritage, buildings, and evenour residential sort of letter
state. So I work with them quitea lot in the region, we tend to
try and roll out refreshertraining every now and again,
(06:15):
just so they're ofay with thesort of basics and who to go to
when they're planning projects,and how to know commission back
surveys and preliminaryecological assessments and risk
assessments. So that's kind of aprocess is that, you know, right
at the start is planning early,we know we're going to encounter
protecting species, usuallybats, great crested newts, and
(06:36):
others, when we're doingconservation work. To get those
assessments in early as a matterof course, try and keep people
educated and trained, and thenrun with the projects as they
involve. So sort of an example,sometimes they can be really
straightforward. So it'll be,you know, electrical work or
fire alarms in a cottage on oneof the trust estates. So sort of
(06:59):
the residential estate, or asyou said, it could be the big
fire compartmentation projectswhere we have, you know, 16th
century buildings with hugegreat big roof spaces that are
just opened. And we now need todeal with fire egg. So we've,
we've sort of developed goodrelationships with our fire
offices as well, and tried totest and then develop approaches
(07:22):
to putting that flaps backdoors, in firewalls in a loss
after getting proper surveys,and assessments. And trying to
make a big emphasis onmonitoring those afterwards as
well to see if it's worked. Andif things are still effective.
Yeah, to actually the ones thatare more challenging, like a big
(07:45):
reroofing project on a, youknow, grade one listed mansion
of national significance. And,or, you know, really sort of far
more complicated projects. Werealso sort of testing how we do
it. So on a swarming site, forexample, in one of our
properties, so, yeah, reallychallenging. I mean, we're here
(08:07):
at the vine at the moment. Sothat was a few years ago, big
reroofing project. So we did alot of work on that to make sure
we compensated, you know, the, Ithink it's three species of
that, that roost here in thebuilding. So just
Steve Roe (08:21):
tell us a bit more about that. Bruce, then in terms
of because we're sad, we canjust see the corner the building
through the trees, just tell usa bit more about that project.
Jo Hodgkins (08:28):
Yeah, so I'm gonna forget the architectural
significance of the buildingnow. But yeah, it's a huge
mansion in various phases ofdevelopment. Some from sort of
early mediaeval onwards, theconservation condition, reviews
of the built structure revealedthat there are problems with the
roof and leaks, chimneys thatwere structurally unsound. So we
(08:52):
had a major project over anumber of years to re roof and
repair. And doing doing it insuch a way also kept in touch
with the history of thebuilding, but also the species
of bat and other wildlife we hadhere. So the early part of
feasibility development wasgetting all those surveys done.
Yeah, I think it's three speciesroost here. But I might have
(09:17):
remembered that wrong. But yeah,so we did have maternity rousse
on we had whiskered, long,brown, long eared and pips, I
think. And so we working with aconsultant, we developed a sort
of phased approach to thebuilding of work, working
outside of the sort of sensitiveperiods under licence, putting
(09:39):
back better access, you know,putting back roosts, enhancing
as we went as well, were workingin with the building as well. So
we developed there was there'sseveral phases of roofing tile
here, for example, in stone, sowe've got different bat access
tiles for each kind ofarchitectural carry. through the
(10:00):
roof, bit sort of little labconsultant called them little
bat ladders she developedworking with the contractor that
got bats up under the tiles andover like, lath and plaster
work. So yeah, so lots of thatwas done with a sort of good
contractor as well. Andalongside actually showing the
public what we were doing aswell. So alongside a big, big
(10:24):
project to do the reroof, aswell as all the protective
species workers involved, it wasalso having scaffold access to
members of the public to lookwhat we were doing and look at
the work we're doing to takenature into account and just
showing sort of that bestpractice really.
Steve Roe (10:41):
We visited Lake Okeechobee with Wendy priests
from Wiltshire group this serieswhere they've got soprano
pipistrelles emerging from themouths of gargoyles on fountains
tower. What are the usual routesites do you have? Or do you
have a favourite roost?
Jo Hodgkins (10:53):
Oh gosh, that's difficult question. Yeah, a lot
of them are in roof spaces. ButI think one of my favourites is
is actually Clifton, where wehave a swarming site under what
is a, you know, cute, hugelyarchitecture, important
structure, the south terrace. Sothere are a few Majan it's got
(11:14):
huge archways, they're like themales of caves, big brick and
stone vaults. And that hasawesome swarming. And that is
one of my favourites because wekind of stumbled upon it almost
in the early part of feasibilityfor that project. And just
having a look around thebuilding thinking, Ah, there are
about droppings here. And then Iand a local consultant, as well.
(11:38):
He was also in the back group Iwas a member of at the time,
sort of just having a little bitof investigation and thinking,
Ah, we think we've got we mighthave swarming here, which is
just really exciting, you know,and it's been kind of an
exciting journey and achallenging journey as well.
Just working out how we could dothe conservation work on that
structure. And just keep thatsignificance for wildlife as
(11:59):
well.
Steve Roe (12:01):
When I was researching questions for this,
I was looking at what you've puton the National Trust website,
and I was thinking, well, youmust have roost or at least you
properties obviously havesupport for all 17 species. But
then am I right in thinkingyou've also you also end the
railway tunnel where the onethat turns up for progress, Mao
said,
Jo Hodgkins (12:18):
Yeah, we do. Yeah, that's yeah, that is in my my
region, but I actually share theregion with another nature
conservation advisor. And thatproperty is in his portfolio. So
I haven't ever been in Now Iwould love dearly love. But yes,
we do. We do have that veryspecial bat or two now. Yes.
(12:38):
Yeah. So yeah, we have got thatas well. Yeah. So it's, it's
great. And
Steve Roe (12:43):
we see headlines all the time now that changes in
farming practices remain factorin the decline of wildlife in
the last few decades. Obviously,large proportion of NT land is
farms. So how much of a focusdoes the trust have with regards
to encouraging farmers and theirtenant farmers to manage land
with wildlife in mind, and howeffective is it? And yeah,
Jo Hodgkins (13:01):
that's a really big push that the trustee is trying
to do at the moment, or has beentrying to do for this of last
eight, nine years. Currentstrategy period is to try and
improve the condition of ourland for nature, including that
tenanted farmland, I mean, wedon't manage it in hand, the
vast majority of that is managedthrough sort of farming partners
(13:21):
or farm tenants. And we try towork with them to to improve the
state of nature on farm.
Obviously, that has itschallenges, but we have some
wonderful examples within thetrust. And within the team I
work in, we've got a farmadvisor, as well as land use and
farming advisor who's, you know,trying to do the same thing as
well, whether it's, you know,changing the way someone farms
(13:43):
from perhaps a conventionalintensive model to sort of
regenerative model we've, we'vestarted to look at effectiveness
of our interventions on ourfarmland. But it's early days,
we we've done some work over thelast few years with Bat
(14:06):
Conservation Trust actuallycomparing bats on trust land
aloft trust land to see if therewas a difference if we could use
it as a metric for a sort ofstrategic metric for measuring
how effective some of those landmanagement changes have been.
And that was a reallyinteresting piece of work. We
didn't have significant resultsfor all species to sum the size
(14:28):
of the data, the amount of datawe needed for effective sample
to detect change was quitechallenging as well. So that's
still something I'd like toexplore more in future moment of
this strategy period, we havegot effectively what we call one
of our outcome metrics, which isbats, the others are
butterflies, birds and plants todetect, you know, how effective
(14:51):
would be overall with ourstrategy changes and influencing
our farm tenants and
Steve Roe (14:59):
of those conservation practice things like increasing
margins failed, is it that sortof thing? Yeah. It's
Jo Hodgkins (15:05):
it's a whole range to be honest. I mean, what
working with farmers, you know,is also taking into account sort
of their business model as welland whether we can diversify or
help them change. So it might beno Phil margins more hedges
might actually be taking someland out or food production for
nature, or diversifying theirgrazing model, making it more
(15:28):
extensive. Whether it's directintervention into sites, to
green hay, grasslands, plantmore trees, or allow more
natural regeneration. So it's,it's a huge range. You know,
right from those tree plantingprojects, no transforming land
management effectively to justsimple things like fill margins,
(15:52):
good hedge management. Yeah, wedo margins, small, small
interventions like that. AndI'll even soil you know, just
making sure our soil is in goodhealth as well.
Steve Roe (16:04):
And I've seen it in my mattress properties in the
region, I come from up in theMidlands, we've seen the
mattress, either taking on longterm leases or buying new land
at sort of landscape scale. Isthe trust working towards more
of a landscape scale in terms ofits effectiveness and taking on
less of a property portfolio. Isit looking to move into the
(16:25):
landscape side of things?
Jo Hodgkins (16:26):
Um, I think it's still a bit of both Yeah, we're
definitely trying to work orlandscape scale. But that might
not necessarily be throughacquisition that could be
through working in partnershipwith neighbouring landowners,
whether they're, you know, NGOs,private landowners, farmers,
etc. So it's, it's whateverworks for the particular
situation, really. And thatmight be acquisition. In some
(16:47):
cases, it can be just workingmore closely with some of our
own tenants, and working inpartnership. So it's, it's the
whole range. But absolutely, youknow, we've within the trust,
we're within our sort of what wecall out of London nature sphere
of work, we're very muchfollowing those laws and
principles. And we we've gotinternal measures that kind of
reflect those as well. So we'reoften trying to make our own
(17:10):
landholding better, as well, as,you know, increasing the
habitat, we have creatingrestoring habitat, and
connecting it as well intopartners land or our own land.
So definitely, definitely tryingto do that landscape scale
piece.
Steve Roe (17:26):
Coming back then to properties like this one,
obviously, a lot of them areclosed at night, how does
National Trust enable thegeneral public to experience
bats on their properties? Andwhat sort of things you do? And
then can you do more? Yeah,
Jo Hodgkins (17:40):
it's lots of time in terms of doing more, it's
just really down to capacity ina lot of places. Yeah. But yes,
I mean, we do we have lots ofbrilliant rangers and lots of
group partners as well, you helprun bat walks on properties. We
have some places that havecameras like CCTV and battery.
So we're able to show that onsocial media or in visitor
(18:02):
centres. It's a sort of reallydepends on the place really
eminent I think there's allthere's always a challenge to
try to do more and try and bemore innovative about it. So
yeah, we definitely look to sortof try and take some of those
opportunities. Yeah, I thinkthere are some properties who
have also trialled out of oursaccess, like to doing something
(18:22):
we used to call the big campthat we did for a few years and
still happens on some propertieswhere people, you know, we
organise a camp for the nightwhere we do bat walks, or might
be running some bat surveys atthe time, just incidentally, so
we, you know, show people whatwe're doing.
Steve Roe (18:36):
You touched on backups. What role do local
backups play in the trust work?
And in from data on from we'vegot access to quite a lot of
properties. And presumably, lotsof back groups have the same
across the country? Yeah,
Jo Hodgkins (18:47):
it's a really good partnership work there. I mean,
it's the trust that relies onvolunteers, essentially, to
deliver a lot of its work. Andparticularly when we're talking
about some of our wildlifemonitoring, sort of the routine,
sort of stuff like butterflyTransics route counts, those
kinds of things. We very muchrely on volunteers to do that.
And working with bat groups isbrilliant in that respect to now
(19:08):
help us galvanise and trainother volunteers to monitor some
of our roosts to help us withbat work and bat walks and
engage people with bats. Yeah,so that there's some really good
partnerships that groups and youknow, we always encourage all of
our properties to, you know,find out who your local bat
group members are, orrepresentatives, you know, and
build that partnership, becauseit's a really good one to have.
Steve Roe (19:31):
And then do you just want to talk about some of the
case studies that you've sort ofbeen memorable over the years in
terms of stuff you've workedwith on pass them? Um,
Jo Hodgkins (19:39):
yeah, well, I've sort of mentioned the vinery
roofing project, which was a bigone where we've developed sort
of lots of interesting work tomitigate the impact on bats. But
I mean, there's there's somethat have been have taken up
sort of years of my lifeeffectively, in good ways and
bad in the trust, which becauseof you know, because of the
(20:00):
length of time it can take to dosome of these building
conservation work. So some, someare memorable, just for that,
but they're also memorable. Sochallenging when I had mentioned
Clifton, which was, you know, afive year project to restore
this hugely significantstructure that we discovered we
had autumn swarming in. So howare we going to balance now
(20:20):
working at the right time ofyear for some of the building
structure things like limemortars and things like that,
and how we would then deal with,you know, auto swarming
hibernation use of the site, thecomplications of licencing it
and whether we need to hardwork, so we had lots of
discussions in Natural Englandand with Donald Trump at the
(20:42):
time, he was a volunteerspecialist for the trust is
hugely helpful, navigatingthrough that. So we did find a
really good working solution anda window where we could work on
a contractor who reallyunderstood that and helps
deliver that. So it was a very,sort of long, five years, making
those phasing work, when itwould have the least impact.
(21:05):
Always vacating the structuresand leaving them back friendly,
you know, every, by the end ofAugust every year, just to make
sure we had, you know, all thatswarming capacity there. So that
was that was really challengingas sort of a favourite in the
way that we did it. We learnedan awful lot, and, you know,
(21:27):
delivered it, and we think it'sbeen successful. The sort of
post project monitoring we'vedone, but there were challenges
along the way, I'd have to behonest. And then another another
project that I'm sort of quitefond of discuss. I really love
the property was just one of thefire compartmentation projects
at Charles Charleston. Yeah. Soit's quite a small manor house
(21:49):
that the Trust has only hadsince the 90s. And it's it's not
one that's like presented to themuseum standard. The trust often
does have its collections. Whenit was acquired. It was in it
was lived in as a family house.
And so it has the air about it.
And that's one reason I love itbecause you walk into it and you
just think, yeah, it live hereis this really lovely, but it
(22:11):
has these fabulous roof voidsthat have long haired Riesen
Myotis. And historically, alsohorseshoes apparently. Another
reason it's sort of a favouriteis because Pruitt is one of the
family he used to be involvedthere sort of told one of my
colleagues when she was a girlthat horseshoe bats, I think
(22:34):
it's less a horseshoe bats usedto fly down the staircase within
the house from the lofts andsort of exit a basement level
and they would sit and watchthem. And I just thought how
fantastic and wouldn't it bewonderful if we got that back at
some point into the propertythat I mean they then they
haven't ever been there. In sortof my 10 year we had some
(22:55):
potential what a say some apotential dropping of a
horseshoe in one of the oldstable buildings there are
probably in the early 2000s. ButI've never found anything since
but it would be fantastic ifhorseshoes came back there.
Steve Roe (23:09):
This is a horrible question. Do you know what the
largest roofs you've got as
Jo Hodgkins (23:13):
well? Now there was I don't know if this is still
current figures. But we did somework about now. It must be eight
years ago looking at the impactof mitigation work we've done so
I went to case studies wherewe've done building work with
that stump mitigation and andtracked the success or not of
(23:34):
it. And doing that I came acrossa reset of soprano pipistrelles,
which was at the time of thework counted at 50 100. So I
don't know if we've got a biggerone than that at the moment.
Yeah, that's pretty impressive,man. I know. There's Seaton
Delaval. In the north, they'rehibernating pips as well. I
(23:56):
think some of those estimateswere sort of in three hundreds.
She's pretty good forhibernation. Yeah. But yes, I'm,
I don't know if we've got, youknow, the good, good enough data
really about numbers to know thebiggest roost but that's got to
be a contender.
Steve Roe (24:14):
Joe Hodgkins, thank you very much for taking time
out to come on bacha.
Jo Hodgkins (24:17):
Thank you. It's been brilliant chatting.
Steve Roe (24:21):
Massive thanks to Joe for taking the time to sit with
me in the baking gauger sunshineto give us that insight into
bats at the National Trust.
We've put a link in the shownotes to some of the National
Trust webpage is about that, aswell as links to more
information about bats inhistoric buildings. We'll be
back in two weeks time when I'llbe over in Wales. And you'll be
joining me at the entrance to acave in amongst temperate
rainforest for the final episodeof this series and capture them
This is BatChat, the podcast from the Bat
Conservation Trust, where we'retaking you out into the field to
discover the world of batconservation.
Welcome back, folks, you'relistening to BatChat, which is
for anyone with an interest inthe enigmatic mammals filling
(00:28):
our skies at night. I'm SteveRoe professionally, I'm an
ecologist and in my spare timeas well as doing this podcast,
I'm a trustee for the BatConservation Trust. This is the
penultimate episode of thisseries the sound you can hear
from a microphone which I placednext to an artificial tree hole,
which is home to over 60 lies asbats and as well as the roost
chatter. You can hear thescuffling sounds as they're
(00:48):
leaving the bat box which ismade from a piece of tree trunk.
This particular box is locatedon a national trust property in
the Midlands, but in themorning, I'm off down to a
property called The Vyne nearBasingstoke to meet the person
who is essentially in charge ofthe largest number of bat roosts
in the country.
(01:13):
Where we're currently in thenearly the middle of August, and
I'm down in Hampshire just northof Basingstoke with Jo Hodgkins
Jo's finished work for the day,and she's got to get back to the
other white. So thank you fortaking time out and staying
behind to do the interview.
You're the National Trust natureconservation adviser for London
in the southeast. How did yourcareer path get you to this
(01:35):
amazing job?
Jo Hodgkins (01:38):
Oh gosh, yeah.
Well, it started off way backwhen I was at school, really
just having a passion for natureand parents who, luckily are
interested in nature andwildflowers as well. Yeah, so I
actually my first roles with thewildlife trusts are
volunteering, working, doingwildlife site surveys and land
management advice to landownersbefore managing a liquor record
(02:00):
Centre in local government, andthen deciding I really, really
needed to back out again, on theground with people delivering
for nature. So yeah, luckily, Igot a project post with the
National Trust, which led to afull time job and that was 22
years ago.
Steve Roe (02:18):
We've got you on because you, monks, many things
you do you do a lot of the batwork. How often do you encounter
bats in your day to day job? Andhave you ended up doing a lot of
bad stuff with the trust?
Jo Hodgkins (02:30):
Yeah, well, the the trust, as well as having all our
land and estates, obviously,lots of old buildings, and most
of them are bat roost. Weencounter them through survey
when we're doing our day to daywork, like repairs, conservation
work on buildings tree work. Butwe did do a sample a few years
(02:51):
ago, to look at how often wemight encounter about so so we
took a sample of buildings anddetermined that had batteries or
not, and worked out actually isabout 95% of Trust buildings
have that roosts or batpotential land that she use for
foraging. So we have a workingassumption that on every
project, every builtconservation project we do, it's
(03:14):
going to involve bats. So therole I have as a regional nature
conservation advisor means thatI'm the person who often advises
on the process to get sitesurveyed, what's required
licencing and those kinds ofthings working with external
contractors. So we have goodnetworks of external partners
and contractors we work with aswell, because I couldn't
(03:34):
possibly do the groundwork forall the projects that are
involving bats at any one time.
So it's sort of advisory from mypoint of view. So probably in
the average week, I would sayI'm probably dealing with bats
or other protective species orcalls about them probably every
other day, something like that.
(03:55):
And there's a project going onall the time. In in our region,
probably double figures ofprojects at the minute involving
bats, but I actually got intobats. Through working with the
trust, I had kind of a casualinterest in bats. Before I came
to work for the trust, and itstarted getting interested in
joining a local back group. ButI didn't have that urge to kind
(04:18):
of be a volunteer batteriesvisitor and call around in
people's locks. It wasn't untilcoming to the trust and actually
working with someone who was abit of a mentor, guy called
David Bullock with that, whosort of challenged me to get my
licence get my rabies jobsbecause I'm a bit needle phobic
or I was several years ago. Andif I did that, I could go on
(04:43):
some mining, some mine checksfor horseshoes in
Gloucestershire. So thatchallenge was kind of enough
really. And I that's how I kindof got into it and from then on
just got much more activelyinvolved in doing that work and
more of this little survey andresearch side of it and stuff at
the trust as well, sort of usingmy licence to get access to some
(05:06):
really fabulous old buildingsrather than sort of dusty lofts
on big, big mansion lofts withroosts in so yeah, I'm very
lucky.
Steve Roe (05:15):
And you, you said the working assumption that all
trust buildings, or at least 95%of them have roofs. And when you
put that into context, the truststones over 50,000 buildings, so
the trust probably is thelargest single roof tender in
England, Wales and NorthernIreland, clearly, you've got a
huge responsibility for ourspecies and populations. What
sort of work does the NationalTrust do to help conserve that
(05:37):
species? And? And yeah, whatsort of what sort of
conservation projects do youhave to think about? The trust
obviously has to update its beltand things like fire eggs? How
often do bats crop up and cause?
Not issues, but complicationsfor projects? I guess?
Jo Hodgkins (05:53):
Yeah, it's, it's in the vast majority of projects,
really, we, we have within thetrust of a cohort building
surveyors who lead a lot of theconservation work on our built
heritage, buildings, and evenour residential sort of letter
state. So I work with them quitea lot in the region, we tend to
try and roll out refreshertraining every now and again,
(06:15):
just so they're ofay with thesort of basics and who to go to
when they're planning projects,and how to know commission back
surveys and preliminaryecological assessments and risk
assessments. So that's kind of aprocess is that, you know, right
at the start is planning early,we know we're going to encounter
protecting species, usuallybats, great crested newts, and
(06:36):
others, when we're doingconservation work. To get those
assessments in early as a matterof course, try and keep people
educated and trained, and thenrun with the projects as they
involve. So sort of an example,sometimes they can be really
straightforward. So it'll be,you know, electrical work or
fire alarms in a cottage on oneof the trust estates. So sort of
(06:59):
the residential estate, or asyou said, it could be the big
fire compartmentation projectswhere we have, you know, 16th
century buildings with hugegreat big roof spaces that are
just opened. And we now need todeal with fire egg. So we've,
we've sort of developed goodrelationships with our fire
offices as well, and tried totest and then develop approaches
(07:22):
to putting that flaps backdoors, in firewalls in a loss
after getting proper surveys,and assessments. And trying to
make a big emphasis onmonitoring those afterwards as
well to see if it's worked. Andif things are still effective.
Yeah, to actually the ones thatare more challenging, like a big
(07:45):
reroofing project on a, youknow, grade one listed mansion
of national significance. And,or, you know, really sort of far
more complicated projects. Werealso sort of testing how we do
it. So on a swarming site, forexample, in one of our
properties, so, yeah, reallychallenging. I mean, we're here
(08:07):
at the vine at the moment. Sothat was a few years ago, big
reroofing project. So we did alot of work on that to make sure
we compensated, you know, the, Ithink it's three species of
that, that roost here in thebuilding. So just
Steve Roe (08:21):
tell us a bit more about that. Bruce, then in terms
of because we're sad, we canjust see the corner the building
through the trees, just tell usa bit more about that project.
Jo Hodgkins (08:28):
Yeah, so I'm gonna forget the architectural
significance of the buildingnow. But yeah, it's a huge
mansion in various phases ofdevelopment. Some from sort of
early mediaeval onwards, theconservation condition, reviews
of the built structure revealedthat there are problems with the
roof and leaks, chimneys thatwere structurally unsound. So we
(08:52):
had a major project over anumber of years to re roof and
repair. And doing doing it insuch a way also kept in touch
with the history of thebuilding, but also the species
of bat and other wildlife we hadhere. So the early part of
feasibility development wasgetting all those surveys done.
Yeah, I think it's three speciesroost here. But I might have
(09:17):
remembered that wrong. But yeah,so we did have maternity rousse
on we had whiskered, long,brown, long eared and pips, I
think. And so we working with aconsultant, we developed a sort
of phased approach to thebuilding of work, working
outside of the sort of sensitiveperiods under licence, putting
(09:39):
back better access, you know,putting back roosts, enhancing
as we went as well, were workingin with the building as well. So
we developed there was there'sseveral phases of roofing tile
here, for example, in stone, sowe've got different bat access
tiles for each kind ofarchitectural carry. through the
(10:00):
roof, bit sort of little labconsultant called them little
bat ladders she developedworking with the contractor that
got bats up under the tiles andover like, lath and plaster
work. So yeah, so lots of thatwas done with a sort of good
contractor as well. Andalongside actually showing the
public what we were doing aswell. So alongside a big, big
(10:24):
project to do the reroof, aswell as all the protective
species workers involved, it wasalso having scaffold access to
members of the public to lookwhat we were doing and look at
the work we're doing to takenature into account and just
showing sort of that bestpractice really.
Steve Roe (10:41):
We visited Lake Okeechobee with Wendy priests
from Wiltshire group this serieswhere they've got soprano
pipistrelles emerging from themouths of gargoyles on fountains
tower. What are the usual routesites do you have? Or do you
have a favourite roost?
Jo Hodgkins (10:53):
Oh gosh, that's difficult question. Yeah, a lot
of them are in roof spaces. ButI think one of my favourites is
is actually Clifton, where wehave a swarming site under what
is a, you know, cute, hugelyarchitecture, important
structure, the south terrace. Sothere are a few Majan it's got
(11:14):
huge archways, they're like themales of caves, big brick and
stone vaults. And that hasawesome swarming. And that is
one of my favourites because wekind of stumbled upon it almost
in the early part of feasibilityfor that project. And just
having a look around thebuilding thinking, Ah, there are
about droppings here. And then Iand a local consultant, as well.
(11:38):
He was also in the back group Iwas a member of at the time,
sort of just having a little bitof investigation and thinking,
Ah, we think we've got we mighthave swarming here, which is
just really exciting, you know,and it's been kind of an
exciting journey and achallenging journey as well.
Just working out how we could dothe conservation work on that
structure. And just keep thatsignificance for wildlife as
(11:59):
well.
Steve Roe (12:01):
When I was researching questions for this,
I was looking at what you've puton the National Trust website,
and I was thinking, well, youmust have roost or at least you
properties obviously havesupport for all 17 species. But
then am I right in thinkingyou've also you also end the
railway tunnel where the onethat turns up for progress, Mao
said,
Jo Hodgkins (12:18):
Yeah, we do. Yeah, that's yeah, that is in my my
region, but I actually share theregion with another nature
conservation advisor. And thatproperty is in his portfolio. So
I haven't ever been in Now Iwould love dearly love. But yes,
we do. We do have that veryspecial bat or two now. Yes.
(12:38):
Yeah. So yeah, we have got thatas well. Yeah. So it's, it's
great. And
Steve Roe (12:43):
we see headlines all the time now that changes in
farming practices remain factorin the decline of wildlife in
the last few decades. Obviously,large proportion of NT land is
farms. So how much of a focusdoes the trust have with regards
to encouraging farmers and theirtenant farmers to manage land
with wildlife in mind, and howeffective is it? And yeah,
Jo Hodgkins (13:01):
that's a really big push that the trustee is trying
to do at the moment, or has beentrying to do for this of last
eight, nine years. Currentstrategy period is to try and
improve the condition of ourland for nature, including that
tenanted farmland, I mean, wedon't manage it in hand, the
vast majority of that is managedthrough sort of farming partners
(13:21):
or farm tenants. And we try towork with them to to improve the
state of nature on farm.
Obviously, that has itschallenges, but we have some
wonderful examples within thetrust. And within the team I
work in, we've got a farmadvisor, as well as land use and
farming advisor who's, you know,trying to do the same thing as
well, whether it's, you know,changing the way someone farms
(13:43):
from perhaps a conventionalintensive model to sort of
regenerative model we've, we'vestarted to look at effectiveness
of our interventions on ourfarmland. But it's early days,
we we've done some work over thelast few years with Bat
(14:06):
Conservation Trust actuallycomparing bats on trust land
aloft trust land to see if therewas a difference if we could use
it as a metric for a sort ofstrategic metric for measuring
how effective some of those landmanagement changes have been.
And that was a reallyinteresting piece of work. We
didn't have significant resultsfor all species to sum the size
(14:28):
of the data, the amount of datawe needed for effective sample
to detect change was quitechallenging as well. So that's
still something I'd like toexplore more in future moment of
this strategy period, we havegot effectively what we call one
of our outcome metrics, which isbats, the others are
butterflies, birds and plants todetect, you know, how effective
(14:51):
would be overall with ourstrategy changes and influencing
our farm tenants and
Steve Roe (14:59):
of those conservation practice things like increasing
margins failed, is it that sortof thing? Yeah. It's
Jo Hodgkins (15:05):
it's a whole range to be honest. I mean, what
working with farmers, you know,is also taking into account sort
of their business model as welland whether we can diversify or
help them change. So it might beno Phil margins more hedges
might actually be taking someland out or food production for
nature, or diversifying theirgrazing model, making it more
(15:28):
extensive. Whether it's directintervention into sites, to
green hay, grasslands, plantmore trees, or allow more
natural regeneration. So it's,it's a huge range. You know,
right from those tree plantingprojects, no transforming land
management effectively to justsimple things like fill margins,
(15:52):
good hedge management. Yeah, wedo margins, small, small
interventions like that. AndI'll even soil you know, just
making sure our soil is in goodhealth as well.
Steve Roe (16:04):
And I've seen it in my mattress properties in the
region, I come from up in theMidlands, we've seen the
mattress, either taking on longterm leases or buying new land
at sort of landscape scale. Isthe trust working towards more
of a landscape scale in terms ofits effectiveness and taking on
less of a property portfolio. Isit looking to move into the
(16:25):
landscape side of things?
Jo Hodgkins (16:26):
Um, I think it's still a bit of both Yeah, we're
definitely trying to work orlandscape scale. But that might
not necessarily be throughacquisition that could be
through working in partnershipwith neighbouring landowners,
whether they're, you know, NGOs,private landowners, farmers,
etc. So it's, it's whateverworks for the particular
situation, really. And thatmight be acquisition. In some
(16:47):
cases, it can be just workingmore closely with some of our
own tenants, and working inpartnership. So it's, it's the
whole range. But absolutely, youknow, we've within the trust,
we're within our sort of what wecall out of London nature sphere
of work, we're very muchfollowing those laws and
principles. And we we've gotinternal measures that kind of
reflect those as well. So we'reoften trying to make our own
(17:10):
landholding better, as well, as,you know, increasing the
habitat, we have creatingrestoring habitat, and
connecting it as well intopartners land or our own land.
So definitely, definitely tryingto do that landscape scale
piece.
Steve Roe (17:26):
Coming back then to properties like this one,
obviously, a lot of them areclosed at night, how does
National Trust enable thegeneral public to experience
bats on their properties? Andwhat sort of things you do? And
then can you do more? Yeah,
Jo Hodgkins (17:40):
it's lots of time in terms of doing more, it's
just really down to capacity ina lot of places. Yeah. But yes,
I mean, we do we have lots ofbrilliant rangers and lots of
group partners as well, you helprun bat walks on properties. We
have some places that havecameras like CCTV and battery.
So we're able to show that onsocial media or in visitor
(18:02):
centres. It's a sort of reallydepends on the place really
eminent I think there's allthere's always a challenge to
try to do more and try and bemore innovative about it. So
yeah, we definitely look to sortof try and take some of those
opportunities. Yeah, I thinkthere are some properties who
have also trialled out of oursaccess, like to doing something
(18:22):
we used to call the big campthat we did for a few years and
still happens on some propertieswhere people, you know, we
organise a camp for the nightwhere we do bat walks, or might
be running some bat surveys atthe time, just incidentally, so
we, you know, show people whatwe're doing.
Steve Roe (18:36):
You touched on backups. What role do local
backups play in the trust work?
And in from data on from we'vegot access to quite a lot of
properties. And presumably, lotsof back groups have the same
across the country? Yeah,
Jo Hodgkins (18:47):
it's a really good partnership work there. I mean,
it's the trust that relies onvolunteers, essentially, to
deliver a lot of its work. Andparticularly when we're talking
about some of our wildlifemonitoring, sort of the routine,
sort of stuff like butterflyTransics route counts, those
kinds of things. We very muchrely on volunteers to do that.
And working with bat groups isbrilliant in that respect to now
(19:08):
help us galvanise and trainother volunteers to monitor some
of our roosts to help us withbat work and bat walks and
engage people with bats. Yeah,so that there's some really good
partnerships that groups and youknow, we always encourage all of
our properties to, you know,find out who your local bat
group members are, orrepresentatives, you know, and
build that partnership, becauseit's a really good one to have.
Steve Roe (19:31):
And then do you just want to talk about some of the
case studies that you've sort ofbeen memorable over the years in
terms of stuff you've workedwith on pass them? Um,
Jo Hodgkins (19:39):
yeah, well, I've sort of mentioned the vinery
roofing project, which was a bigone where we've developed sort
of lots of interesting work tomitigate the impact on bats. But
I mean, there's there's somethat have been have taken up
sort of years of my lifeeffectively, in good ways and
bad in the trust, which becauseof you know, because of the
(20:00):
length of time it can take to dosome of these building
conservation work. So some, someare memorable, just for that,
but they're also memorable. Sochallenging when I had mentioned
Clifton, which was, you know, afive year project to restore
this hugely significantstructure that we discovered we
had autumn swarming in. So howare we going to balance now
(20:20):
working at the right time ofyear for some of the building
structure things like limemortars and things like that,
and how we would then deal with,you know, auto swarming
hibernation use of the site, thecomplications of licencing it
and whether we need to hardwork, so we had lots of
discussions in Natural Englandand with Donald Trump at the
(20:42):
time, he was a volunteerspecialist for the trust is
hugely helpful, navigatingthrough that. So we did find a
really good working solution anda window where we could work on
a contractor who reallyunderstood that and helps
deliver that. So it was a very,sort of long, five years, making
those phasing work, when itwould have the least impact.
(21:05):
Always vacating the structuresand leaving them back friendly,
you know, every, by the end ofAugust every year, just to make
sure we had, you know, all thatswarming capacity there. So that
was that was really challengingas sort of a favourite in the
way that we did it. We learnedan awful lot, and, you know,
(21:27):
delivered it, and we think it'sbeen successful. The sort of
post project monitoring we'vedone, but there were challenges
along the way, I'd have to behonest. And then another another
project that I'm sort of quitefond of discuss. I really love
the property was just one of thefire compartmentation projects
at Charles Charleston. Yeah. Soit's quite a small manor house
(21:49):
that the Trust has only hadsince the 90s. And it's it's not
one that's like presented to themuseum standard. The trust often
does have its collections. Whenit was acquired. It was in it
was lived in as a family house.
And so it has the air about it.
And that's one reason I love itbecause you walk into it and you
just think, yeah, it live hereis this really lovely, but it
(22:11):
has these fabulous roof voidsthat have long haired Riesen
Myotis. And historically, alsohorseshoes apparently. Another
reason it's sort of a favouriteis because Pruitt is one of the
family he used to be involvedthere sort of told one of my
colleagues when she was a girlthat horseshoe bats, I think
(22:34):
it's less a horseshoe bats usedto fly down the staircase within
the house from the lofts andsort of exit a basement level
and they would sit and watchthem. And I just thought how
fantastic and wouldn't it bewonderful if we got that back at
some point into the propertythat I mean they then they
haven't ever been there. In sortof my 10 year we had some
(22:55):
potential what a say some apotential dropping of a
horseshoe in one of the oldstable buildings there are
probably in the early 2000s. ButI've never found anything since
but it would be fantastic ifhorseshoes came back there.
Steve Roe (23:09):
This is a horrible question. Do you know what the
largest roofs you've got as
Jo Hodgkins (23:13):
well? Now there was I don't know if this is still
current figures. But we did somework about now. It must be eight
years ago looking at the impactof mitigation work we've done so
I went to case studies wherewe've done building work with
that stump mitigation and andtracked the success or not of
(23:34):
it. And doing that I came acrossa reset of soprano pipistrelles,
which was at the time of thework counted at 50 100. So I
don't know if we've got a biggerone than that at the moment.
Yeah, that's pretty impressive,man. I know. There's Seaton
Delaval. In the north, they'rehibernating pips as well. I
(23:56):
think some of those estimateswere sort of in three hundreds.
She's pretty good forhibernation. Yeah. But yes, I'm,
I don't know if we've got, youknow, the good, good enough data
really about numbers to know thebiggest roost but that's got to
be a contender.
Steve Roe (24:14):
Joe Hodgkins, thank you very much for taking time
out to come on bacha.
Jo Hodgkins (24:17):
Thank you. It's been brilliant chatting.
Steve Roe (24:21):
Massive thanks to Joe for taking the time to sit with
me in the baking gauger sunshineto give us that insight into
bats at the National Trust.
We've put a link in the shownotes to some of the National
Trust webpage is about that, aswell as links to more
information about bats inhistoric buildings. We'll be
back in two weeks time when I'llbe over in Wales. And you'll be
joining me at the entrance to acave in amongst temperate
rainforest for the final episodeof this series and capture them
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