Our Volunteer Bat Survey

We're delighted to let you know that our Bats in Churches paper on the results from the National Bats in Churches Study and the Church Bat Detectives is published in the British Ecological Society’s People & Nature journal on Friday 31st October 2025.

You can read Understanding bats in English churches: a citizen science approach via open access on the BES Website.

A summary of the results with some easy infographics is available in our Bats in Churches Project Final Report under Workstream Four.

There is also more information on the Bat Conservation Trust website

As many of you know, this survey was lead by our friend and colleague Claire Boothby who would be so happy to see this work finally published. Claire, the lead author of this paper, sadly passed away before its publication. Claire was a dedicated conservationist, influencing others across the UK and beyond. She is greatly missed, but her work and approach to life continues to inspire her fellow authors and former colleagues.

We would like to thank all the volunteers and church representatives who gave their time and made this research possible. We would also like to thank players of the National Lottery as this research was made possible by funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and was carried out as part of a larger Bats in Churches project (www.batsinchurches.org.uk). We would like to thank the project partners (Natural England, the Church of England, Historic England, the Bat Conservation Trust and Churches Conservation Trust) for their commitment and support of this study.