It is the second greater mouse-eared bat found at the castle in two months
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00:00Dover Castle. It may be known as a historic landmark and a great tourist attraction,
00:06but have you ever thought about it as a home for bats?
00:14Well, last month, Claire Moon and a team of ecologists were lucky enough to find one of the rarest species of bat in the whole of the UK,
00:22the greater mouse-eared bat.
00:24Yes, so we do, as volunteers, we do regular hibernation surveys at Dover Castle and other sites around Kent, in particular in Dover.
00:34We've been monitoring the bats at Dover Castle for roughly seven years, every single year,
00:38and in that time we've actually found three very rare bats for Kent.
00:42So it's proven to be quite an important site for monitoring,
00:46potentially because bats are coming over from France across the Channel and Dover Castle's got a prominent landmark.
00:52It is a prominent coastal position, very close to France.
00:55So as climate change and other things happen that pushes the distribution of certain species in a northwards direction,
01:01it's likely to be one of the first places that we'll see evidence of that occurring.
01:06And it's just such a fantastic site, it offers so many opportunities.
01:09We've got so many features for roosting for bats,
01:12and Dan Tewson of Natural England's been doing a fantastic job working with local farmers in the Dover Valleys.
01:18Now this bat isn't like any ordinary bat that you may find in your back garden.
01:21There are only three of them in the whole of the UK.
01:24Existing as a critically endangered species, they have twice the wingspan of more common bats,
01:30and can grow up to eight centimetres in length.
01:32The greater mousted bat is definitely our rarest bat.
01:36For many years there was just one individual, one known individual,
01:39and then a second one appeared a couple of years ago,
01:42and now it seems we have at least one other.
01:47How does it compare? Our second rarest bat is the grey long-eared bat,
01:52and there's about a thousand individuals of that species.
01:55In terms of the roles they play, all of our 18 species eat insects,
02:00so they all help to control insect numbers.
02:04In Kent particularly, we know that other species that haven't been found here for a very long time
02:09have suddenly started appearing over the last few years.
02:13So there's another species called the greater horseshoe bat that appeared in Kent about,
02:18oh, I think four years ago, five years ago.
02:20Bats are an important bit of our natural heritage,
02:24and the more people become aware of them and go out and enjoy them,
02:29the more they'll be there for the long term, and for the benefit of us all.