Application for Scientific Permit – Available for Public Comment
Public comment on the following application for a Scientific Research (Fauna) Permit is open until 13 September.
Applicant: The Bookend Trust
Species/Taxon: All of Tasmania's 8 resident bat species
Location: Tasmania, all tenures where permitted
Title of research: Cracking the calls: building Tasmanians’ capacity to monitor and improve bat conservation status
Aim of project:
To obtain a library of calls by bats of known species – by first identifying bats at roosts or in the hand, and then recording bats as they leave the roost or hand. The library will be used to improve our capacity to identify bat calls recorded by citizen scientists across Tasmania, as part of our CallTrackers acoustic monitoring project, and thereby monitor the conservation status of these species' populations long term.
Justification:
Not all species' roosts are easy to find. For certain species, every known roost – including on reserved land – may be of special value to the project.
We will be building a call library and, from that, improved automatic recognisers – these will enable the CallTrackers longterm monitoring project to monitor the conservation status of these species. The monitoring will assist conservation managers in decisions that could affect bats. Bats face many potential threats and two of Tasmania's bat species (including the endemic Tasmanian long-eared bat) are already internationally listed as Vulnerable.
Maximum likely numbers of individuals involved: Across three years, a maximum of 150 individuals of each species will be captured.
Activities undertaken and methods: Capture by hand and hand-net at roosts, and harp-traps outside roosts. We will also collect faecal samples at visited roosts, for potential future genetic study in relation to species identification.
Fate of animals: Release at site of capture.
Likely impact on species involved (including any by-catch):
None. These are standard methods used to capture micro-bats around the world. Bat capture will be led by an expert with over 15 years' experience in catching all of these species; no mortality or significant injury to any bat has occurred during their work.