7th AfricanBats Bat Fieldworkers course, including Introduction course

Introduction to bat biology, ecology, conservation and identification course, held at Meletse, with Elenor Glass (bottom right) participant, together with Tosca Vanroy - training mentor (bottom left) and Ernest Seamark.

The 7th AfricanBats Bat Fieldworkers level I course was held from 24 November to 16 December 2019. Ms. Eleanor Glass (Sweden, University of Uppsala) was the only participant. Eleanor also undertook the “Introduction to bat biology, ecology, conservation and identification” course, which is a pre-requisite to undertake the bat fieldworkers course level I. Ms. Tosca Vanroy (Belgium), a participant on the 6th Bat Fieldworkers course in 2018, joined the course as a training mentor. While helping with the training, Tosca was able to increase her field experience. This also created an opportunity to transfer other skills, which could form part of a level II field training. During the field course, 172 individual bats were implanted with RFID tags by Tosca. This supplied an opportunity to test teaching of this skill to a student, especially to examine ways to practice implantation technique, before trying on a live bat. Especially if RFID tags are going to be more widely used in the future.

Elenor Glass (bottom left) who participated in the 7th AfricanBats Bat Fieldworkers course, together with Tosca Vanroy - training mentor (bottom right) and Ernest Seamark.

While undertaking the course there were also opportunities for Eleanor to interact with various landowners and staff, where she carried out interviews as part of her master’s research work - looking at people’s feelings and beliefs of bats.