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1 Introduction

The global road network gets longer, wider, faster and more complex as existing road systems are upgraded and new roads are built. Despite the widely acknowledged need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel and growing concerns about the environmental impact of roads, improved communication by road, and even the act of road-building itself, are often seen as essential economic drivers. As road networks expand, traffic volumes increase and congestion remains a problem. A few statistics highlight the pervasive nature of our road networks: only 2 % of Germany is made up of landscape fragments greater than 100 km2 (Jaeger et al. 2007) and only 17 % of the US landscape is more than 1 km from a road (Riiters and Wickham 2003). In 2012, the UK had 395,000 km of roads, of which over 50,000 km are major roads and 3700 km motorways (Defra 2013). Major roads account for only 13 % of all UK roads, but carry 65 % of the traffic. 50 % of all traffic is on motorways and other major roads in rural areas. Almost 20 % of major road length is dual carriageway. Over 3200 km have been added to the UK network in the last decade and many more have been upgraded.

Roads have several negative impacts on animals. First, building roads and their ancillary structures destroys habitat directly. Secondly, the resulting road network fragments the landscape, potentially restricting animal movements, thereby blocking their access to the remaining habitat. Thirdly, roads are also sources of light , noise and chemical pollution , and so degrade the habitat around them. Moreover, the increased human access provided by roads usually accelerates urban, commercial and agricultural development and increases human disturbance in many ways, e.g. through increased recreational pressure and the introduction of non-native predators and other invasive species. Finally, fast moving traffic kills animals directly. Broad reviews of the effects of roads on vertebrates include Bennett (1991), Forman and Alexander (1998), Trombulak and Frissell (2000), Coffin (2007), Fahrig and Rytwinski (2009), Laurance et al. (2009), Benítez-Lόpez et al. (2010), and Rytwinski and Fahrig (2012). Surprisingly, despite the many ways in which roads can impact on wildlife, it is only in the last 20 years that significant attention has been given to what is now often referred to as ‘road ecology’ (Forman et al. 2003). Little of this attention was directed at bats. Moreover, the few existing studies on the impact of roads on bats have all been carried out in North America and Europe.

Globally many bat species are endangered (Racey and Entwistle 2003; Jones et al. 2009), including regions with a dense infrastructure such as North America and Europe (Safi and Kerth 2004). As a consequence, in Europe, for example, bats are of high priority for conservation and all bat species have been strictly protected for two decades by European law (CMS 1994). Despite the importance of bats in conservation, rigorous, peer-reviewed studies on the impact of roads on bats have only begun to be published in the last few years. Only over the last decade it has been widely accepted that roads must have an effect on bats. As a result, mitigation against these effects is becoming increasingly integrated in the road building process and practical mitigation guidelines have been published in a number of countries (e.g. Highways Agency 2001, 2006; Limpens et al. 2005). However, the precise nature and scale of the effects of roads on bats were mostly unknown, and as a consequence mitigation has often been poorly monitored and therefore rarely informed by sound evidence (Altringham 2008; O’Connor et al. 2011).

This review describes the ways in which roads do or may affect bats, discusses the available evidence in relation to each, and where appropriate suggests action for the future, in terms of both research and conservation action. Because work on the impacts of roads on bats is still scarce and biased towards the temperate zone, some work on other animals will be discussed, in particular birds, to help fill important gaps. Roads can affect bats in many ways, and because the mitigation solutions will to some extent be unique to each, the mechanisms will be discussed separately. However, there is considerable interaction between them and the impacts in many cases are cumulative, so some topics will appear under more than one heading.

To our knowledge almost no studies have been published yet that investigated the effects of railways on bats (but see Vandevelde et al. 2014). However, as linear development features, they have the potential to disrupt bats and will be discussed briefly at the end of the review.

1.1 Bat Life History

In order to assess the impact of roads on bats, an important consideration is of course the biology of the bats themselves. Bats are small mammals with the life history strategy of very much larger species (e.g. Barclay and Harder 2003; Altringham 2011). They have taken the low fecundity, long life option, often producing only a single pup each year, but frequently living for more than 10 years and not unusually 20 or more (e.g. Barclay and Harder 2003; Altringham 2011). Any external factors that reduce reproductive success, increase mortality , or both, can lead to severe population declines—and recovery will be slow (e.g. Sendor and Simon 2003; Papadatou et al. 2011). Furthermore, bats typically have large summer home ranges compared to other similar sized mammals and many bats migrate over considerable distances between winter and summer roosts (Altringham 2011). Finally, bats are highly gregarious (Kerth 2008). As a result, negative impacts of roads on local bat colonies can affect large numbers of individuals simultaneously. Because of their particular life history, bats are susceptible to a wider range of environmental disturbances than many other small mammals.

1.2 Bat Conservation Status

A substantial number of the more than 1200 extant bat species are considered to be endangered (Racey and Entwistle 2003; Jones et al. 2009). Reasons for the decline of bats include habitat loss, pollution , direct persecution and diseases (Jones et al. 2009). Several of these threat factors are also relevant during the construction and maintenance of roads . In Europe, all bats are strictly protected, as all are listed in Annex 4 of the Habitats Directive, and several species have designated protected areas because they are also listed in the Annex 2 of the Habitats Directive (Council Directive 92/43/EEC). As a consequence, whenever bat populations are likely to be adversely affected by the construction of roads, environmental assessments are required and mitigation often becomes a necessity. Thus assessments of bats have been carried out during many recent infrastructure projects (e.g. Kerth and Melber 2009) and this process will continue to be important in the future.

2 The Effects of Roads on Bats—Habitat Destruction, Fragmentation , Degradation and Collision Mortality

2.1 Loss of Habitat

Road development frequently involves the removal of trees and buildings that hold potential or actual bat roosts. The removal of trees, hedges, scrub, water bodies and unimproved (‘natural’) grassland also reduces available foraging habitat. The road surface alone destroys significant areas of habitat: 7 ha for every 10 km of 7 m wide, two-lane road. Roadside hard shoulders, verges, junctions, service areas and other structures remove yet more potential habitat. As a result, road construction leads to the permanent loss of habitats for bats and thus is likely to reduce population sizes directly.

2.2 The Barrier Effect

Roads are potential barriers to flight between roosts and foraging sites and between summer, mating and winter roosts. They could therefore reduce the available home range size and quality and may restrict migration, which could increase mortality and reduce reproductive potential. Roads may act as barriers because they interrupt existing linear flight lines, because some species are reluctant to cross open ground, because some species avoid lit areas (road and vehicle lights) and, at least initially, because they represent sudden changes in the bats’ familiar landscape. Roads may therefore fragment habitat, decreasing its accessible area and quality. Since habitat area and quality are major determinants of population size, then habitat fragmentation will lower the sustainable population size.

Barriers such as roads may also limit the flow of individuals between populations with two major consequences. First, barriers may slow the recovery from local population declines since recruitment of individuals from neighbouring populations (“rescue effect”) will be reduced and this will further increase the probability of local extinction. Secondly, barriers may also reduce gene flow between populations and increase inbreeding, reducing individual fitness and increasing the risk of local extinction. Genetic isolation such as this can only occur with very low levels of dispersal . These factors may only be significant for rare bat species that already have small and fragmented populations. Of course it may be that they are rare because of their susceptibility to these and other anthropogenic pressures.

Genetic isolation as a direct result of roads has not been studied in bats. In several other mammal species an effect of roads on genetic population structure has been found (Frantz et al. 2012). For example, Gerlach and Musolf (2000) have shown that populations of bank vole are genetically different either side of a four-lane highway. However, even in bat species such as Bechstein’s bat, Myotis bechsteinii , for which barrier effects of motorways haven been shown to occur in the summer habitat (Kerth and Melber 2009), local populations living in an area with several motorways show only weak genetic differentiation (Kerth et al. 2002; Kerth and Petit 2005). In accordance with the findings on Bechstein’s bats, population genetic studies on other temperate zone bats typically found no or very little evidence for genetic isolation on the regional scale (Moussy et al. 2013), despite the dense road network in Europe and North America. This suggests that in the temperate zone roads probably have no significant effect on gene flow in most bat species. For tropical bats much less data on population genetic structures are available but the situation may be different from the temperate zone. In general, mammal and bird species living in tropical rainforests are often particularly reluctant to cross open areas (Laurance et al. 2009). Moreover, unlike most bats in Europe and North America, tropical bats often mate close to or at the breeding sites of the females. Both features make tropical bats likely to suffer more from fragmentation by roads by means of restricted gene flow than temperate zone bat species. Clearly, further studies are needed to test this.

There is considerable evidence to suggest that roads act as barriers to bats during foraging and movements between different day roosts (roost switching) in the summer habitat. Bats have been shown to make major detours to avoid roads or to find appropriate crossing points (e.g. Kerth and Melber 2009). This behaviour could lead to longer journeys that consume time and energy or even deny bats access to parts of their habitat. In the study by Kerth and Melber (2009) of 32 radiotracked, female Bechstein’s bats, only three individuals, belonging to two different maternity colonies, crossed a four-lane motorway cutting through a German forest to forage (Fig. 3.1). All three bats used an underpass to cross the motorway. Other bats from four nearby colonies did not cross the motorway. Moreover, during roost switching none of the colonies crossed the motorway. In addition, foraging areas of females were smaller in those colonies whose home range was bounded by the motorway, relative to those bounded by more natural forest edges. Importantly, females in colonies bounded by the motorway had lower reproductive success than other females, persuasive evidence for the adverse effects on reproductive output. In the same study, six barbastelle bats, Barbastella barbastellus , belonging to one maternity colony, were also tracked and five made several flights over the road itself (Fig. 3.1). Moreover, the barbastelle bat colony used roosts on both sides of the motorway. These findings highlight the fact that the effects of roads are species-specific, as will be discussed in more detail later. Berthinussen and Altringham (2012a) observed only three bats flying over a six-lane motorway, all belonging to Nyctalus species, at heights above 20 m. Nyctalus species are known to fly high and to forage in open spaces (e.g. Jones 1995), behaviour that is likely to make them less susceptible to the barrier effects of roads and to collision mortality . The absence of other species of bat flying over the road in this study suggests that the severance of linear elements by the road may have caused the abandonment of previous flight lines.

Fig. 3.1
figure 1

Home range use of two forest bat species living close to a motorway in Germany. The upper picture shows the polygons depicting the individual foraging areas of 32 Bechstein’s bats belonging to six different colonies living in a German forest that is cut by a motorway. The lower picture shows the polygons depicting individual foraging areas of six barbastelle bats belonging to one colony living in the same forest as the Bechstein’s bat colonies. From Kerth and Melber (2009)

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Roads may be perceived as barriers by bats for several reasons: open spaces and artificial light expose them to predation, and moving traffic and noise may be seen as threats. Small gaps (<5 m) in cover along flight routes can interrupt commuting bats (e.g. Bennett and Zurcher 2013), but many species will cross open spaces, even those adapted to forage in woodland (e.g. Kerth and Melber 2009; Abbott 2012; Abbott et al. 2012a; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b), although they will typically do so close to the ground (e.g. Russell et al. 2009; Abbott 2012; Abbott et al. 2012a; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b). Abbott et al. (2012a) observed low-flying species crossing at sites where mature hedgerows had been severed by the road, even when the gap was >50 m. However, Abbott (2012) found that the rate of bat crossing decreased with increasing distance between mature hedgerows on opposite sides of the road, suggesting a greater barrier effect . Russell et al. (2009) reported that reduced cover at the roadside reduced the number of crossing bats.

That some bats will cross roads is not an indicator that open roads are not a problem—the proportion of bats that do cross may be very small and they are at risk of collision with traffic . The presence of traffic does appear to have a direct effect on the likelihood of crossing, since Indiana bats, Myotis sodalis , reverse their flight paths and exhibit anti-predator avoidance behaviour in response to approaching vehicles (Zurcher et al. 2010; Bennett and Zurcher 2013). No specific study has been made of crossing behaviour in relation to traffic volume and road width but anecdotal evidence suggests that it matters. For example, in the study of Kerth and Melber (2009) an individual Bechstein’s bat that flew over a two-lane road did only cross a four-lane highway through an underpass . Light and noise are discussed below.

Evidence for a barrier effect is seen in other studies. Berthinussen and Altringham (2012a) found that total bat activity , the activity of the most abundant species (Pipistrellus pipistrellus ) and the number of species, were all positively correlated with distance from a 40 year-old, six-lane, unlit motorway in rural north-west England (30–40,000 vehicles/day). Total activity increased more than threefold between 0 and 1600 m from the road. These effects were consistent over the two years of study and similar results were obtained on a rural motorway in south-west England (25–90,000 vehicles/day) (Berthinussen 2013). Unpublished work (A. Berthinussen and J.D. Altringham, in preparation) shows that this effect can extend to single carriageway (two-lane) roads . The most likely explanation for this spatially extensive reduction in bat activity is a long-term barrier effect, possibly in combination with increased mortality , driving colonies away from the road, and this is discussed further below.

2.3 Roadkill

Bats that attempt to cross roads risk collision , and hotspots for mortality have been found where flyways cross roads and where there is favourable habitat for bats on both sides of a road (e.g. Lesiński 2007; Russell et al. 2009; Medinas et al. 2013). Although agile and manoeuvrable in flight, most bat species fly at low speeds (<20 km/h) and many fly close to the ground (0–4 m: e.g. Russell et al. 2009; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b), particularly when crossing open spaces. In contrast to the majority of birds, most bats also spend most of the time they are out of the roost in flight. They make extensive use of linear landscape features, such as woodland edges and hedgerows along roads, for foraging and as navigational aids when commuting and several recent studies have shown how important these linear elements are to bats (e.g. Boughey et al. 2012; Frey-Ehrenbold et al. 2013; Bellamy et al. 2013). Flying close to such edges may also reduce predation risk. In combination, these behavioural traits make bats highly vulnerable to moving vehicles when either foraging along roads or when attempting to cross roads on commuting flights. Being small, bats can probably be pulled easily into the slipstream of passing vehicles. Russell et al. (2009) watched over 26,000 bat crossings (primarily little brown bats, Myotis lucifugus ) on a highway in the USA. Bats approached the road using tree canopy cover and fewer bats were recorded crossing where cover was absent. The lower the cover, the lower the bats crossed the road. Where bats were forced to cross an open field on leaving the roost most did so at a height of less than 2 m. Berthinussen and Altringham (2012b) recorded bats of four or more species crossing roads at mean heights well below 5 m (Fig. 3.2).

Fig. 3.2
figure 2

Boxplot of flight height above verge height of identified crossing bats. Median with upper and lower quartiles. Significant differences shown for Myotis and Pipistrellus species **P < 0.0005,***P < 0.0001. Verges are elevated on either side of the road and are above road height, therefore negative values indicate bats flying across the road below the height of the verge. From Berthinussen and Altringham (2012b)

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Lesinski (2007) recorded bat casualties on an 8 km section of two-lane highway by weekly searches for carcasses over four summers. Casualties ranged from 0.3 bats/km/year in built-up areas to 6.8 bats/km/year where roads were bordered by trees. However, a study by Slater (2002) of the rate of removal of ‘carcasses’ (small pieces of chicken!) by scavengers on Welsh roads, suggests that a census of this kind may underestimate wildlife road kills as much as 12–16 fold, since dawn scavengers typically removed small carcasses within 30 min. More recently Santos et al. (2011) have also shown that bat carcasses persist on roads in Portugal for a similarly brief period due to scavenging. Teixeria et al. (2013) studied roads in Brazil and found that roadkill estimates increased 2–40 fold when scavenging and low detectability were accounted for. This wide variation was due to taxonomic differences and bats would be at the high end of this range. In addition, small bat carcasses are difficult to spot and many will be thrown clear of the road or carried some distance on the vehicle, suggesting that underestimates will be even greater. Arnett (2006) found that humans (in the absence of scavengers) were able to find only 14 and 42 % of bat carcasses placed at two wind farm sites and Mathews et al. (2013) reported that humans found only 20 % of bat carcasses at wind farms, relative to 73 % found by dogs. Road mortality studies will therefore inevitably under-estimate true mortality rates.

A significant proportion of European bat species, occupying a range of ecological niches, have been documented as roadkill (e.g. Billington 2001–2006; Lesiński 2007; Lesiński et al. 2010). Woodland-adapted species should be most affected due to their characteristic low and slow flight, but this prediction was not supported by Lesiński et al. (2010), as noctules (Nyctalus noctula) were killed in significant numbers. Clearly other factors can play an important role locally. Forman et al. (2003, pp 120–122) show that wildlife collisions increase as vehicle speed and traffic volume increase, and with proximity to wildlife habitat and wildlife movement corridors. There are no data on bats relating mortality to speed and traffic volume, but there is no reason to believe they will be different from that of other taxa. There are data from bats to show that roadkill is greater in good habitat and at natural crossing points (Lesiński et al. 2010; Medinas et al. 2013). The effects of traffic speed and volume, road width and height, habitat characteristics, and bat species on rates of roadkill should be explored in greater depth to help us understand how best to mitigate against the effects of roads .

Collection of roadkill carcasses by Russell et al. (2009) led to a conservative estimate of an annual mortality of 5 % of the bats in local roosts. Altringham (2008) arrived at a similar estimate, based on conservative calculations for a road in the UK crossed by lesser horseshoe bats from a large roost (data from Billington 2001–2006). Theoretical studies (e.g. Lande 1987; With and King 1999; Carr and Fahrig 2001) show that populations of animal species with low reproductive rates and high intrinsic mobility, such as bats, are more susceptible to decline and ultimately extinction by the additional mortality caused by roads .

2.4 Habitat Degradation—Light , Noise and Chemical Pollution

Light Several studies (e.g. Rydell 1992; Blake et al. 1994; Stone et al. 2009, 2012) have shown that road lighting deters many bat species, notably slow-flying, woodland-adapted species such as members of the genera Rhinolophus, Myotis and Plecotus, from approaching the road. Lighting will probably exacerbate the barrier effect of roads , since those species reluctant to cross open spaces are also those most likely to avoid light . Both high-pressure sodium and white LED light deter woodland-adapted species, even at low intensity (Stone et al. 2009, 2012). Because light intensity drops rapidly away from the source and will often be blocked by vegetation, the effects of isolated sources are not likely to be far reaching in the landscape, but large arrays of high intensity lights will have a significant effect close to roads.

Light can also attract some bat species, in particular open air foragers such as Nyctalus and generalists like Pipistrellus (e.g. Rydell 1992; Blake et al. 1994), since short wavelength light attracts insect prey, concentrating them around lights and increasing bat foraging efficiency. This may be not be all good news, since bats exploiting insect swarms around lights may be at greater risk of collision with traffic .

As discussed above, many woodland-adapted bats avoid all forms of visible light , so insects around lights are not available to them. Many insects may indeed be drawn out of woodland towards lights, reducing prey availability to woodland specialists. This could effectively enhance the edge effect around woodland. This has yet to be demonstrated but is worth investigation. The chapter by Rowse et al. discusses the detrimental and beneficial effects of artificial lights on bats in detail.

Noise Most insectivorous bats rely on hearing the returning echoes of their ultrasonic echolocation calls to orientate, detect prey and even communicate. Some species locate and capture prey by listening for sounds generated by their prey, such as wing movements or mating calls. Traffic noise may mask prey-generated sounds and the lower frequency components of echolocation calls. During indoor flight room experiments, simulated traffic noise reduced the feeding efficiency of the greater mouse-eared bat, Myotis myotis , which typically hunts by listening for sounds made by its prey on the ground (Siemers and Schaub 2011). It is likely that habitats adjacent to noisy roads would therefore be unattractive as feeding areas for this and other species that glean their prey from the ground or vegetation by listening to rustling noises. Vehicle noise may also exacerbate the barrier effect : bats become less likely to fly across a road as traffic noise increases (Bennett and Zurcher 2013). Currently, there are no published field studies that have assessed the effect of traffic noise on bat diversity, abundance or breeding success. However, as described below, traffic noise, like light , is only likely to have a significant effect over relatively short distances.

Pollution Chemical pollution is another significant factor potentially affecting bats close to roads : transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases. In the USA, over 50 % of domestic CO2 emissions come from cars, putting 1.7 billion tonnes into the atmosphere every year—a major contributor to climate change. In addition there are the local effects of other chemical pollutants. Automobile exhaust gases close to a road have been shown to be associated with a decline in arthropod diversity and abundance (Przybylski 1979). Motto et al. (1970) and Muskett and Jones (1980) found significant effects on invertebrates of lead and other metals from cars up to 30 m from roads.

2.5 Species-Specific Effects

Body size, wing form, echolocation call structure and feeding and roosting ecology all determine how bats fly and use the landscape. Thus, it is not surprising that the effects of roads on bats are to a significant extent species-specific. Larger, fast-flying species, adapted to foraging in the open, appear from most studies to be less affected by roads (e.g. Kerth and Melber 2009; Abbott et al. 2012a; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012a), as they typically fly high above the ground. Their greater flight efficiency and speed relative to woodland-adapted species mean that even if they are forced to make long diversions to find safe crossing points or to avoid roads altogether, the consequences are likely to be less important. Smaller, slower flying, woodland-adapted species are more manoeuvrable and typically capable of gleaning and hovering but this necessarily makes them less efficient flyers (Altringham 2011). Woodland species are also more reluctant to fly in the open and tend to commute along linear features in the landscape such as treelines , waterways, and woodland edges. These features provide protection from weather and predators, are sources of insect prey, and provide conspicuous acoustic and visual landmarks for orientation. Figure 3.3 shows schematically the main patterns of flight and habitat use by insectivorous bats. It is unfortunate that the species most likely to be affected by roads, the slow-flying, woodland-adapted bats, such as Rhinolophus and some Myotis species, are also those that have suffered most from human activity in Europe and North-America and are at highest risk of extinction there (Safi and Kerth 2004).

Fig. 3.3
figure 3

Flight style and habitat use by insectivorous bats. Drawing by Tom McOwat

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2.6 Road Class and Speed

The greater width of motorways may make them more effective barriers (Berthinussen and Altringham 2012a) than most other roads . However, traffic density may be equally important (Russell et al. 2009; Zurcher et al. 2010; Bennett and Zurcher 2013) and many major non-motorway roads carry similar or greater traffic volumes, at comparable speed, to rural motorways.

Even minor roads are avoided by many bat species. In a habitat suitability modelling (HSM) study in northern England based on extensive acoustic surveys, Bellamy et al. (2013) found that only Nyctalus and Pipistrellus species showed a positive association with roads and then only when roads were at low densities and in close proximity to woodland. This association is likely due to the use by bats of hedgerows along roads that connect to woodland. Other species, particularly woodland specialists, such as Myotis and Plecotus species, avoided roads and all species avoided roads when they became dense around settlements. All road classes were combined in this study, but minor roads predominate in the region, so the effects of major roads were probably underestimated. Studies of birds support these conclusions: Develey and Stouffer (2001) and Laurance et al. (2004) have shown that even narrow, unpaved forest roads can act as barriers to tropical forest birds.

In the absence of further work on bats we can look at other animals. Forman et al. (2003) demonstrated that roads act as significant barriers to a variety of mammals from voles to grizzly bears, that primary roads are significantly more effective barriers than secondary roads, and the barrier effect increases with increasing traffic volume. The effects in some cases are severe. Gerlach and Musolf (2000) have shown that populations of bank vole are genetically distinct either side of a busy four-lane highway (50 m wide, 30,000 vehicles/day), but not either side of a two-lane country road (10 m, 5000 vehicles/day) or a railway. Highways can be major genetic barriers even to large and mobile animals such as coyotes and lynx (Riley et al. 2006) or red deer (Frantz et al. 2012).

2.7 Cumulative Effects, Extinction Debt and the Importance of Scale

Most of the factors discussed above will be cumulative. The effects of each individually need not therefore be great for the combination to have a profound effect on a bat population. Furthermore, in many cases there will be a lag, known as the extinction debt, between cause and effect (e.g. Tilman et al. 1994; Loehle and Li 1996). This is illustrated in Fig. 3.4.

Fig. 3.4
figure 4

The multiple causes of bat population reduction by roads and the delayed response (extinction debt). Adapted from Forman et al. (2003)

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The effects of habitat loss and reduced habitat quality on the distribution of flying bats may be seen quickly, as bats alter their foraging and commuting behaviour to adapt as best they can to the altered landscape. Collision mortality , unless very high, may not have a significant and detectable effect for several generations. The barrier effect may take several more generations to show itself, since it is likely to involve the decline and/or relocation of nursery and other roosts, but it too may be rapid, for example when bats are completely excluded from key foraging areas. Although no data exist for bats, a study of the effects of roads on wetland biodiversity (birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibian and plants) suggests that the full effects may not be seen for several decades (Findlay and Bourdages 2000). This has important implications for monitoring the effects of roads and assessing the effectiveness of mitigation , as discussed later.

Berthinussen and Altringham (2012a) found that the decline in diversity and abundance of bats extended to at least 1.6 km from a motorway. Which of the above mechanisms contribute to this extensive effect? Low activity and diversity close to the road may be due to most or all of the factors identified: habitat degradation resulting from light , noise and chemical pollution , a barrier effect , or increased mortality due to roadkill . Noise pollution can contribute only to short-range effects, since noise levels in the study fell rapidly over the first 200 m and were close to ambient thereafter. Lab studies on the gleaning greater mouse-eared bat Myotis myotis (Schaub et al. 2008; Siemers and Schaub 2011) show that even species that hunt by listening for prey-generated noise are not likely to be affected by roads more than 60 m away. Light pollution was not considered by Berthinussen and Altringham, since the road sections studied were unlit. However, any effect of light pollution from road and vehicle lights is also likely to operate over relatively short distances, due to the inverse square relationship between distance and light intensity. In addition vegetation alongside of roads will further reduce the effect of light and noise pollution quickly. Road developments can disrupt local hydrology and polluted run-off may degrade wetland foraging habitats (Highways Agency 2001), but the scale of such effects will be very variable. As discussed above, chemical pollution is likely to be a factor only over relatively short distances unless dispersion is facilitated by drainage. The many processes that may be degrading roadside habitats need further study, but none of those discussed are likely to explain changes in bat activity over 1.6 km.

Reduced activity over long distances can however be explained by the combination of a barrier effect and increased mortality due to roadkill . The home ranges of temperate insectivorous bat species typically extend 0.5–5 km from their roost (e.g. Bontadina et al. 2002; Senior et al. 2005; Davidson-Watts et al. 2006; Smith and Racey 2008), and most species show high fidelity to roosts, foraging sites and commuting routes (e.g. Racey and Swift 1985; Entwistle et al. 2000; Senior et al. 2005; Kerth and van Schaik 2012; Melber et al. 2013). A major road built close to a nursery roost has the potential to reduce the home range area of a colony through both destruction of habitat and the severance of commuting routes that reduces access to foraging areas. The bats have several options. One is to continue to use the roosts close to the road with a reduced foraging area, reduced resources and reduced reproductive potential (Kerth and Melber 2009). The colony is therefore likely to decline. Alternatively bats may cross the road to maintain their original home range area. Local habitat loss and degradation and increased roadkill will compromise the colony, which may therefore decline. Mortality from roadkill is likely to be high since most species cross at heights that put them in the paths of vehicles (e.g. Verboom and Spoelstra 1999; Gaisler et al. 2009; Russell et al. 2009; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b). Bats may waste time and energy by commuting greater distances, either away from the road to find new foraging sites, or to find ‘safe’ crossing points along the road to commute to their original foraging sites. All of these outcomes will reduce the reproductive output of nursery colonies (e.g. Tuttle 1976; Kerth and Melber 2009). Alternatively the colonies may relocate away from the road, into habitat that is presumably already fully exploited by other colonies. All ‘solutions’ will lead to a fall in bat density near to the road. The overall fall in habitat quality will most likely lead to reduced reproductive success and increased adult mortality and in long-lived bats these will have a profound effect on local colony size and overall population size (Sendor and Simon 2003; Papadatou et al. 2011).

Given the magnitude and spatial scale of the effects on bat activity and diversity observed by Berthinussen and Altringham (2012a), it is likely that barrier and edge effects, together with increased roadkill are having a strong negative effect on the demographics and distribution of local bat populations in proximity to major roads . Similar effects have been found in other vertebrates. Reijnen and Foppen (1994) showed that a decreased density of willow warblers up to 200 m from a major highway was due to the negative influence of the road on population sizes, with reduced breeding success and increased emigration of territorial males. Studies on breeding grassland birds revealed a decrease in density of seven out of 12 species, with disturbance distances up to 3500 m from the busiest roads (50,000 vehicles per day), with collision mortality being a major contributor (Reijnen et al. 1996). A meta-analysis of 49 studies that between them investigated 234 bird and mammal species, found that bird population densities declined up to 1 km, and mammal population densities declined up to 5 km from roads (Benítez-López et al. 2010).

2.8 Secondary Effects—Infill and Increased Urban and Industrial Development

Bypasses are frequently built in the countryside to divert traffic around rather than through population centres, to reduce congestion and improve the environment for people in the town or village. In addition to the direct effects of the road itself, there are frequently other consequences. The typically narrow strip of land between the settlement and the new road may be too small to support viable bat populations. This land is also frequently taken over by residential and industrial/commercial development and indeed this development is often part of the initial plan. This leads to further loss and degradation of habitat and a direct increase in traffic. Many of the secondary effects of roads are more severe in the tropics (Laurance et al. 2009), where roads allow people easy access to the remaining undisturbed habitats, which as a consequence suffer further degradation and an increase in the hunting pressure for bush meat, including bats.

3 Can Roads Benefit Bats?

Although the balance of the impact of roads on bats is clearly strongly negative, there are potential benefits.

Roosts Some of the ancillary structures built with roads , in particular bridges (e.g. Keeley and Tuttle 1999), can provide roosts for bats. Road bridges over water or wooded valleys are the most likely to be used, those over busy roads much less so. Old stone road bridges over water are widely used by bats, most notably by Daubenton’s bat in Europe, but also other Myotis species and by Nyctalus species (e.g. Senior et al. 2005; Celuch and Sevcik 2008; Angell et al. 2013). In North America bridges are widely used by Brazilian free-tailed bats, Tadarida brasiliensis (e.g. Allen et al. 2011) and some other species (e.g. Bennett et al. 2008). Effective mitigation and compensation for the loss of roosting and foraging sites will make the environment close to a road more attractive to bats, but may do so at the expense of greater risk of collision with traffic .

Light Artificial light , particularly short-wavelength light such as mercury-vapour (not most LED lights) attract insects that are common prey to bats. Insect swarms around lights are exploited by open-air foraging bats such as Pipistrellus and Nyctalus (Rydell 1992; Blake et al. 1994; Stone et al. 2009, 2012). One consequence of this is that bats feeding around lights on busy roads may be at significantly greater risk of mortality from collision with traffic . The balance between the positive and negative effects will be dependent on species, topography, the position of lights, etc. and further study would be useful. A very thorough discussion of the positive and negative effects of artificial light can be found in the chapter by Rowse et al.

Flight corridors In rural environments roads are often bounded by hedgerows or treelines . The wide verges often associated with hedges in landscapes managed for wildlife can be among the most species-rich habitats in some agricultural areas. Minor roads in particular can therefore be both foraging sites and commuting routes, but even major roads are used by some species (e.g. Nyctalus leisleri , Waters et al. 1999) where they are bounded by suitable habitat such as a woodland edge. Depending upon structure, this habitat could be used by a wide range of species. However, Bellamy et al. (2013) found that even low road densities had a negative effect on most species of bats, most noticeably the woodland-adapted species Myotis and Plecotus. Only the distributions of common pipistrelles and noctules had a positive association with roads at low to moderate densities and only when in close proximity (<100 m) to woodland. A similar result was found for railway verges (Vandevelde et al. 2014). As road density increased above moderate levels, the probability of presence of all species declined. The effects of roads of different classes have yet to be investigated in depth—the roads in this study were predominantly minor and rural.

4 Conservation in Principle: Avoidance, Mitigation , Compensation and Enhancement

In many countries, legislation has been passed stating that infrastructural development should be carried out in such a way as to minimise the impact of development on the environment, and on protected species such as bats in particular. In principle, there should be no net loss to the environment. In the European Union this is formalised in the Habitats Directive (Council Directive 92/43/EEC). In practice, the system is usually flawed, sometimes severely, due to a lack of knowledge, resources and commercial and political will. Poor goal-setting, planning and execution contribute to either failure, or the absence of any evidence for success, for all wildlife (Tischew et al. 2010) and bats in particular (Altringham 2008; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b; Stone et al. 2013). As in many other areas of conservation a more scientifically robust, evidence-based approach is urgently needed. European policy and practice also involve a hierarchal approach, starting with avoidance of environmental damage, moving to mitigation when damage is deemed to be unavoidable, then compensation when mitigation is not possible or only partial. Finally, there is an increasing expectation that replacing like with like is not enough, particularly given the uncertainty of success in mitigation and the continued loss of biodiversity. When habitat is lost or degraded, some level of habitat enhancement must accompany development so that in principle, the habitat is better than it was before development. The reality is less than perfect.

The first step in a conservation strategy to minimise the impact of a new road should be to select a route that avoids important bat habitat. To be effective this requires an understanding of the behaviour and ecology of the affected species and detailed knowledge of their distribution. Our knowledge in both areas is growing but far from complete. One approach that can deliver detailed, site-specific information relatively quickly is GIS-based HSM, which can be based on existing data sets, such as those held by museums and record centres (e.g. Jaberg and Guisan 2001; Bellamy and Altringham 2015) or data collected specifically for the purpose, for example by acoustic survey (e.g. Bellamy et al. 2013). This approach yields fine scale distribution maps of probability of occurrence for each species with an estimate of reliability, providing a useful practical tool. However, the route that best avoids bats may not meet human social and economic criteria, particularly if conservation is undervalued. The next step is therefore to build the road in such a way as to mitigate against its effects—that is remove or minimise the many detrimental effects described above. In principle, mitigation under European legislation (Habitats Directive, Council Directive 92/43/EEC) reduces ‘damage’ to a minimum that is consistent with maintaining bat populations in favourable conservation status.

Where significant loss cannot be avoided, it is expected that compensation will provide alternative roosting and foraging habitat to at least make good the loss. The expectation now is that there is in fact habitat enhancement, to allow for uncertainties in mitigation and to promote long-term habitat improvement.

In practice, avoidance and mitigation are compromised by competing operational and financial constraints. Furthermore, for practical and economic reasons, habitat restoration and creation are long-term processes and it may be many years before these sites are useful to bats, by which time a disturbed bat colony may have been lost. As we will show in the following section, the absence of adequate and well-planned survey and monitoring means that the consequences of road-building and the effectiveness of current avoidance, mitigation, compensation and enhancement practices are all largely unknown (Altringham 2008; O’Connor et al. 2011). In some cases, they have even been shown to be ineffective (Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b).

5 Conservation in Practice

We are not aware of any cases in which proposed roads have been rerouted to avoid key bat habitat. Almost all work in this area concerns attempts to remove or minimise the damaging effects of roads. This has usually involved building structures that aim to guide bats safely under or over roads to reduce both the barrier effect and roadkill . The structures built may be multifunctional, for example underpasses for people and wildlife, and use by bats has often been an incidental and unanticipated use of structures built for other purposes, such a drainage culverts. Additional features include tree and hedge planting to guide bats towards crossing points, modified lighting schemes to achieve the same ends or deter bats from crossing at dangerous locations and a wide range of more general ‘enhancements’ to improve roosting or foraging opportunities.

5.1 Over-the-Road Methods: Gantries , Green Bridges , Hop-Overs and Adapted Road/Foot Bridges

Bat bridges or ‘bat gantries ’ have been built on many UK and continental European roads in recent years. However, the most widely used design (Fig. 3.5) in the UK does not help bats to cross the road safely, even when on the line of pre-construction flyways and after up to nine years in situ as shown in Fig. 3.6 (Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b). Other designs have yet to be tested effectively. Berthinussen and Altringham (2012b) found that only a very small proportion of bats that approached gantries ‘used’ them (i.e. flew in close proximity to them) and for those that did, their flight paths were not raised above the traffic collision zone (Fig. 3.6). This failure of a widespread design highlights the need for effective monitoring and assessment to be an integral part of mitigation practice.

Fig. 3.5
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The most common bat gantry design in the UK—steel wires with plastic spheres at intervals that are intended to be acoustic guides for bats

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Fig. 3.6
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Bat crossing activity at a ‘bat gantry’ that had been in place for nine years. Gaussian kernel and bandwidth of 1 m used (n = 1078). The gantry is located at distance 0 m on the x-axis, with distance from the gantry increasing to the left and right. The height of the gantry is marked by the square at 0 m, and the pre-construction commuting route is 10–15 m to the right. ‘Unsafe’ crossing heights are located below the dashed line, which is the maximum vehicle height in Europe. The dotted line marked verge shows the decrease in verge height above the road from left to right. From Berthinussen and Altringham (2012b)

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Overpasses built to carry minor roads or footpaths appear to be largely ineffective (Bach et al. 2004; Abbott et al. 2012a) and certainly less effective than underpasses as crossing points (Bach et al. 2004; Abbott et al. 2012a). Most of the structures evaluated have been no more than footbridges and road bridges, with no adaptations to encourage bats, such as tree or shrub planting or careful design of lighting. To date studies have assessed only use, not effectiveness, in that the criterion for success in most studies has been use by an unspecified proportion of bats. A more useful approach would be to assess what proportion of bats crossing a road do so with the aid of crossing structure (Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b).

Land or green bridges have been designed and built specifically for other wildlife, and if planted with tall vegetation and linked to existing bat flyways, they have obvious potential as bat crossing structures. As yet, few have been assessed, but bats have been shown to use one land bridge in Germany. Stephan and Bettendorf (2011) found that only a small proportion of woodland-adapted bats crossed a busy motorway using a new land bridge: most crossed the road itself at other locations. It will be interesting to see if bats adapt to it over time. Specific features of the design and connectivity to surrounding habitat of green bridges are probably critical factors for bat use—as they will be for other structures. Further research is required before conclusions can be drawn, but several features are likely to be positively related to use: their strategic location on known flightlines , connectivity to treelines , mature vegetation on the bridge, and bridge width.

‘Hop-overs’ (Limpens et al. 2005) have been put forward as a relatively low cost and unobtrusive way to encourage bats to cross roads at safe heights. These consist of close planting of trees up to the road edge on both sides of the road, with tall vegetation in the central reservation of wide roads. Branches should overhang the carriageway, ideally giving continuous canopy cover over the road. Safety concerns arising from overhanging branches may have led to reluctance to adopt hop-overs and even to remove trees from road margins. However, many roads have overhanging trees along their margins, so this is an illogical or at least inconsistent objection. The effectiveness of hop-overs has yet to be assessed. Russell et al. (2009) observed that bat flights across a 20 m road gap were at greater heights where bats approached the road along flight routes with taller roadside vegetation and Berthinussen and Altringham (2012b) found a positive correlation between road-crossing height and the height of the roadside embankment.

5.2 Under-the-Road Methods: Underpasses, Culverts and Other ‘Tunnels’

Many studies show that a wide range of bat species use underpasses to fly beneath roads (e.g. Bach et al. 2004; Kerth and Melber 2009; Boonman 2011; Abbott et al. 2012a; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b). However, most of these studies report only that a small number of bats of particular species were seen to fly through an underpass . In some cases not reported here underpasses were monitored using automated bat detectors with no guarantee that detected bats actually flew through the underpass. For an underpass (or indeed any other mitigation structure) to be effective it must help to maintain bats in favourable conservation status. That is, it must protect the population, not a few individuals, by making a road permeable and safe to cross. Assessing abundance, let alone changes in abundance, is very difficult without considerable survey effort. It is also difficult to measure changes in the permeability of a road to bats without monitoring a very large proportion of the bats in the vicinity of a newly built or upgraded road. Ideally, we would need data before the construction of the road and compare them with data after the road had been built. However, it is possible to determine whether the majority of bats at a location use an underpass (or bridge, gantry, etc.) to cross a road safely. Despite the existence of three underpasses within a 5 km stretch of motorway bisecting a forest, resident Bechstein’s bats rarely used them and lost access to important roosting and feeding habitat (Kerth and Melber 2009). Lesser horseshoe bats made frequent use of three underpasses along a 1 km stretch of motorway, but 30 % still crossed directly over the road at traffic height (Abbott et al. 2012b). Some bats have been recorded making extensive detours to avoid crossing roads (e.g. Kerth and Melber 2009 and references cited in Bach et al. 2004), but we do not know how prevalent this behaviour is: many bat species appear reluctant to deviate from their original flight paths after road severance (Kerth and Melber 2009; Abbott 2012; Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b). Where a road cuts through a dense network of flight routes it may not be straightforward providing a population with an adequate number of safe crossing points. Efforts to re-route bat flight paths, for example by planting new hedgerows linking old routes with new underpasses, should be undertaken well in advance of road clearance, and ideally tested for effectiveness before road opening. Bats were not diverted effectively to underpasses studied by Berthinussen and Altringham (2012b): the great majority of bats flew over the road, near to the original commuting routes. In the same study, one underpass on a known flightline was used by 96 % of the bats on the commuting route.

Underpasses are more likely to be used if they are well connected to the landscape by treelines , hedges or watercourses (Boonman 2011; Abbott 2012), but there is scope for further study in this area. Where possible, they should be located on pre-construction flight routes and tall enough to allow bats to pass without changing flight height or direction (Berthinussen and Altringham 2012b). Even with these precautions, a high proportion of bats may ignore the underpass and fly over the road above it, particularly if the underpass is too small. Underpass height, more than width, was the critical dimension determining the number of bats flying through underpasses in studies in Ireland (Abbott 2012; Abbott et al. 2012a, b). Required heights of underpasses will generally be lower for woodland-adapted species (~3 m) compared to generalist edge-adapted species (~6 m), and open-air species are more likely to fly high above roads . For small gleaning bat species, such as some Myotis species, which generally have small home ranges, it may be beneficial to build a higher number of small underpasses (Fig. 3.7) along a road instead of a few large underpasses, which then would by located outside of the home range of most individuals. Mitigation practice would benefit greatly from objective testing and reporting to determine if underpasses are actually providing safe passage for a high enough proportion of bats to protect a local population.

Fig. 3.7
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A bat of the genus Myotis using a small underpass (about 2 m in diameter) to cross a motorway in Germany. Above the underpass, a wall was built to prevent bats from flying directly into the traffic . Similar walling/fencing has been used in the UK but has not yet been shown to be effective (e.g. Billington 2001–2006)

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Bats can potentially make use of underpasses that are used by people during the day but have little use at night, such as pedestrian underpasses, minor roads , railways and forestry or agricultural tracks. Use could be maximised by restricting lighting in and around these underpasses, placing them on tree and hedge lines, and making smaller wildlife underpasses or drainage culverts larger to accommodate woodland-adapted bat species. Provision of well-placed, numerous and spacious underpasses should be integral to the overall design of road mitigation , particularly near major roosts. Roads built on embankments are likely to be particularly dangerous to bats, particularly when they sever treelines , since bats appear to maintain flight height on leaving the treeline, bringing them into collision risk over raised road sections. These sites are ideal candidates for underpasses, since they can be built relatively cheaply.

5.3 Light Avoidance

To reduce the potential for disturbance of roosts, flight routes and feeding sites lighting is often directed down toward the road surface, and light spill into the surroundings is minimised. However, since the most vulnerable bats, such as Rhinolophus species, fly close to the ground, downward pointing lighting may still have a significant impact on their behaviour. Restricting lighting in crossing structures such as pedestrian underpasses could increase their use by bats. In addition to choosing the intensity, wavelength and direction of lighting, it could also be controlled be timers and motion sensors. Lighting at river and stream crossings should always be avoided, as these are particularly important foraging areas and commuting routes for bats.

Conversely, light may be used to purposely deflect bats away from a dangerous flight route toward a safe crossing point. This has been done, but has not yet been tested for effectiveness and may exacerbate any barrier effect. This assessment is important not only to protect bats, but other wildlife too, since many species avoid light.

5.4 The Importance of Connectivity and the Maintenance of Existing Flightlines

An important consideration that is frequently referred to is the need to maintain existing flightlines . There is evidence to support this and it is clearly a sensible precaution. As discussed above, Berthinussen and Altringham (2012b) found that an underpass on a pre-existing flightline was used by 96 % of the bats crossing the road, but attempts to deflect bats to two other underpasses displaced from known routes were not successful.

An extension of this is the general recommendation to maintain and enhance a ‘connected’ landscape, i.e. a landscape with a broad range and high density of interconnecting linear features such as hedgerows and treelines . This would not only increase the value of the landscape for foraging and commuting , but may give bats more flexibility in how they adapt to a changing landscape and in particular the appearance of barriers in the form of roads . This makes intuitive sense, given the known behaviour of many bat species, and there is a growing body of evidence based on spatial analysis to support it (e.g. Boughey et al. 2012; Bellamy et al. 2013; Frey-Ehrenbold et al. 2013; Bellamy and Altringham 2015). These studies highlight, using different approaches, the importance of these features to bats, and also reveal species differences: woodland-adapted species (e.g. Myotis, Plecotus, Rhinolophus) and small generalists (e.g. Pipistrellus) make more use of (and are more dependent upon) these features than larger open-air species (e.g. Nyctalus, Eptesicus).

5.5 Habitat Improvement and Effective Landscape-Scale Planning

Some general forms of mitigation not specifically related to roads are also relevant, such as the planting of trees and the creation of ponds to replace lost habitat or enhance existing habitat as compensation for damage done by roads. Berthinussen and Altringham (2012a) have shown that the effects of major roads are less easily detected in high quality habitat. This is not a reason to build roads in high quality habitat, since a greater number of bats will still be affected than alongside a road through poor habitat, and the species affected may be more vulnerable. However, it is a reason to attempt to mitigate and compensate using habitat improvement, when a road is built in good habitat. Improvements must not increase roadkill or the costs may outweigh the benefits, so habitat design will be an interesting challenge.

Habitat improvement methods have not been tested effectively, so the scale of the benefits is generally unknown. Habitat improvement and creation obviously have the potential to be beneficial if done on an appropriate scale, but are unlikely to be effective in the short or even medium term, since new woodland and wetland take many years to become established. Over the time taken for habitat to mature, bat colonies may be lost, so long-term planning is needed. Considerable financial incentives may be needed to persuade landowners to undertake habitat improvement. Woodland and wetland creation are more likely to be used for compensation and enhancement than direct mitigation .

As discussed earlier, the Habitats Directive stipulates that in preparing development plans, the avoidance of damage is the preferred option. Mitigation and compensation should only be considered when alternative sites, routes or methods are unavailable and the avoidance of damage is not possible. There must also be over-riding social, economic or safety reasons for development. The planning of new road and rail routes now makes extensive use of GIS-based techniques to assist in the evaluation of the many factors involved. However, the environmental components of these analyses often rely on limited and biased data and do not take full advantage of the developing GIS and modelling techniques described earlier. GIS-based HSM is becoming widely used in ecology. HSM uses the detailed relationships between bat presence and habitat variables to build detailed and accurate distribution maps from relatively small datasets. Bellamy et al. (2013) and Bellamy and Altringham (2015) have used HSM to produce high resolution, accurate predictive maps of the distribution of eight bat species in the Lake District National Park. Similar maps have been, and are being, prepared for other protected areas. These techniques determine the associations between bats and their habitat over multiple spatial scales to give greater accuracy and ecological insight. As our knowledge of bat distributions improves, we will be in a better position to identify those routes that will have minimum impact on bats, and better able to devise appropriate mitigation strategies.

5.6 Rail

The effects of rail systems on both bats and other wildlife are even less well understood than those of roads . However, intuitively they have characteristics that may reduce their impact on wildlife. Rail systems are often (but not always) narrower than roads, giving them a smaller footprint and potentially creating a less-effective barrier to animal movement. Trains pass a given point on a network much less frequently than vehicles on roads, which are often continuous. On the busy East Coast line in northern England train noise was detectable for only 8 min/h and this noise decreased to background levels over very much shorter distances than road noise (Altringham 2012). It is nevertheless important that the effects of railways are assessed objectively, particularly in view of the proposed new HS2 line in England, on which trains will travel faster and more frequently. In a study on bat activity of railway verges, Vandevelde et al. (2014) found that bat of the genus Myotis seem to avoid the vicinity of railways whereas species foraging in more open space such as pipistrelle and noctule bats use railway verges as foraging habitat.