What have we found? Astonishingly, the initial monitoring on Cloverside Road detected 7 of Tasmania’s bat species: the , eastern falsistrelle, goulds wattled bat, long-eared bat, large forest bat, , and .

We have also recorded the white-striped freetail bat at two sites in upper Cloverside —a species that has only once been recorded, but has never actually been confirmed in Tasmania. It is one of White-striped Free-tailed Bat © Michael Pennay the larger of the micro-, and is the only Australian bat to have an echolocation call that is audible to the human ear—it makes a Habitat characteristic ‘ping-ping’ call. Tasmanian bats generally do not live in caves but prefer to roost in old tree hollows and sometimes Bats detected on Lower Middle Upper within the attics and walls of rural buildings. They Cloverside Road (Red (Blue (Green perform a valuable ecosystem and agricultural Zone) Zone) Zone) service by controlling insect populations such as mosquitoes. It is important to protect bat habitat Little Forest Bat such as old trees, while reducing predatory threats such as cats.

Large Forest Bat All of the Tasmanian bats are fully protected species and it is illegal to harm them in any way including to catch them without a permit. Southern Forest Bat Find out more here: http://www.fpa.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/ pdf_file/0020/127703/Bat_booklet_2015.pdf Goulds Wattled Bat CLOVERSIDE What next? Chocolate Wattled Bat BAT PROJECT We would like to invite our ‘bat mentor’ Paul Gray to come and have a look at the Cloverside habitat Eastern falsistrelle Summer 2017- 2018 and set up more bat detectors. It would be good to run the Acoustic Recorders over a longer period to pick up more information about the calls Long-eared Bat and behavior of the white-striped freetail bats.

The Huon Valley Roamers also have the hand White-striped Free held Echo Meters available to loan. If you are -tailed Bat interested in participating, please get in touch: [email protected] Photo above supplied kindly by W.E.Brown, Lucaston Why Cloverside Rd? Monitoring Zones There is a ‘cluster’ of Huon Valley Roamers This summer, we have been working with our Landcare members who live on or near neighbours to monitor in three main areas on Cloverside Road—so it was a logical place to properties along Cloverside Road (as shown in focus our bat monitoring project this summer. red, blue and green below). We have also been monitoring bats in Judbury, Ranelagh and other sites in Lucaston. We have needed special technology to monitor the bats because most bat sounds are inaudible to humans. Although bats aren’t blind, in order to whizz around hunting insects at night they rely on an echolocation navigation system that works like sonar. Essentially, a bat can work out how far away something is by how long it takes its Our Story sounds to bounce back. The Roamers are enthusiastic volunteers — including NRM and landcare professionals, Equipment scientists and teachers, as well as passionate We have been using two main pieces of local families. The Roamers’ volunteer specialist equipment, the Echo Meter Touch and management committee puts on projects such as Song Meter Acoustic Recorders. tree planting, weeding, discovery days looking for fungi, and much more, to engage local residents When connected to an iPad or iPhone, the Echo of all ages (look up our @HuonValleyRoamers Meters allow users to record and listen to Facebook page). enhanced bat calls in real-time and apply GPS tags to identify their exact location. The Echo Meters also allow users to identify bat species as Learning About the Huon Valley’s Bats each has a unique echolocation pattern. We Citizen science is taking off at night in the Huon have been using the Echo Meters at dusk, stop- Valley, thanks to a new bat monitoring project ping at various points along the road to pick up being undertaken by members of the Huon Valley bat calls. Roamers Landcare Group. The Acoustic Recorders similarly record bat calls After running two very popular bat awareness and GPS details, but they can be strapped in nights, featuring talks by Tasmanian bat expert, place (e.g. to a tree or fence post) - the Acoustic Dr Lisa Cawthen, the Roamers have started a Recorders will pick up bat calls each night for project to monitor bats in local reserves and over a week. backyards in the Huon Valley as a way of improving local knowledge.

Our monitoring project began in March 2017—we have been lucky enough to have mentoring sup- port in bat detection from another Tasmanian bat expert, Paul Gray.