| Architects building dream homes for bats A group of architects gathered in Oxford, England last month with an unusual brief -- to design the ultimate dream home for bats. Roosting bats can get fatally entangled in the fibers, which degrades the roofing membranes, invalidating their guarantees. Solar panels present another issue. "It's very preliminary, but there seems to be evidence that when you put solar panels on your roof, it can increase the internal roof void temperature, that can be disturbing to bats," says Gunnell. Charles Barclay, who has an architecture practice in South London , has built a tailor made bat barn that was shortlisted for a sustainability award by the British Architect's Journal last year. Wine turbine creates water from thin air while demolishing a 100-year-old brick farmhouse in Suffolk, England, a maternity roost for brown long-eared bats was found in the attic. This meant Barclay had to provide a new roost, which took six weeks more than $70,000 to complete. Although the Suffolk bats appear to have taken up residence, Gunnell says there's never any guarantee that such solutions will work. "The problem we have is that, even if you take everything into account for the bats, they often just will not use the space you've created," says Gunnell. She continued: "A few years ago we had a bat house design competition. In the UK, the fungus has yet to appear, but habitat destruction remains a major threat. Policy-makers in the United Kingdom have stepped in to protect bat populations, criminalizing any interference with their roosts, even if no bats are presently present. English bats are tiny, with the smallest species, the pipistrelle, able to fit into a matchbox. "They can squeeze into the smallest places," says Gunnell. They have varying space requirements. "They need to design these spaces that are biodiversity-friendly, but they're not ecologists," explains Gunnell. Bats prefer to roost in natural features like trees and caves, but as development has made those environments scarcer, some species have adapted to urban areas. That's quite a nicely designed bat house, but two years on, it's never been used by bats. "If you have bats roosting in your building, you can't disturb them in whichever way without getting a special license," says Kelly Gunnell, Built Environment Officer with the Bat Conservation Trust, a charitable organization in London, England. Those who interfere with a roost risk a fine of $7,800 per bat, and up to six months in prison -- although Gunnell says no one has been sent to prison yet. 5m long and 3m high at the apex. Once the barn was finished, the sleeping bats were put into a soft bag by an ecology consultant, and delivered to awaken in their new home. "He also transferred their droppings, so they could smell a bat-friendly area," Barclay says. "Unfortunately, with a lot of people doing loft conversions and barn conversions, that's had a huge impact. 5 million. |
Friday, 1 June 2012
Architects building dream homes for bats
