Volunteers' Page

The Isle of Wight Bat Project is not just about the academic challenge of piecing together the bats' use of the Island habitat, but is also aimed at achieving a better understanding of bats and their contribution to the Island biome in the general public. We are looking for two types of volunteer to help us:

1. People who are willing to place recording equipment in their back garden for up to five nights.
2. People who wish to become more involved in the woodland surveys, and help us analyse the data.

The first category just requires a commitment to collect and return the pre-configured recording equipment and to go through a ten minute briefing on how to set the equipment up. A small effort from people spread across the Island in this way will enable us to tune and improve the species distribution models in a way not possible by woodland survey alone.

The second category of volunteer is for people who want to become more involved with the Isle of Wight Bat Group. In exchange for your time, we will train you in acoustic woodland survey methods, echolocation call analysis and species distribution modelling if you are interested. Again, if you can commit to a few nights a month, this could well make the difference between getting presence data or not. I really want to keep the equipment in full use if at all possible.

If you are interested in helping us, then please contact me (jon.whitehurst36(a)gmail.com, replace (a) with @) or via the IoW Bat Group at info@iowbats.org. We are also mobilised on Facebook, search for the IoW Bat Group there for up the minute information.

Volunteers... Please make sure you read the risk assessment through and go through the help files for using the Elekon equipment before you set out to survey or lay down a static installation.