Investigating attic with bats in Derzprom building.

More than 15 years bat population monitoring in Kharkiv city (NE Ukraine) showed that the most of bat-roosts in buildings by anyway were obtained because of deviations from the norms of construction. Obviously, at the proper construction the cracks, cavities and holes should not appear. But these mistakes of builders create over time the roosts for the hundreds of thousands of bats. Our long-termed observations suggest that eventually, by some reason such defects of construction will be corrected and bats lost their roosts. The Governmental program of energy-efficiency with support of EU is aimed to modernize and to heat-insulate old buildings very rapidly. Will the reconstruction considers bat assessment risks or not depends on two factors:

1) is there any scientific data about abundance and requirements of bat cities’ roosts;

2) is there the pressure from the conservationists on government officials and builders.

The Bat Rehabilitation Center in Kharkiv was established in private zoo “Feldman Ecopark” by Alexander Feldman Foundation and integrate local bat specialist in 2013. Our unique experience in bat education, monitoring and rehabilitation progress has to spread to others cities and towns.

Our main project activities:

1). Manage formality of legal protection of bat-roosts in buildings in Ukraine.

2). Compose list of bat-roosts for Kharkiv city and for others towns in North-Eastern Ukraine.

3). Conduct bat rehabilitation work in winter and save hundreds of bats hibernating in buildings.

4). Prepare and print bat-educated materials.

5). To manage the creation of alternative bat-roosts net by creation and putting artificial bat roosts and boxes.

We want to achieve the level up of the bat conservation and monitoring of urban habitats of Eastern Europe. This level up will be conducted in three directions:

1) development of lawful framework for the protection of bat colonies in buildings in Ukraine,

2) specification of data needed for effective conservation management,

3) spread the procedures of bat rehabilitation and population monitoring in urban habitats among research groups and volunteers in countries of the former USSR.