THE ITALIAN BAT ROOST PROJECT: A PRELIMINARY INVENTORY OF SITES AND CONSERVATION PERSPECTIVES

The Italian bat roost project, launched by the Italian Chiroptera Research Group (GIRC), aims to develop a constantly updated national database of bat roosts. Short- term objectives are to inventory roosts and identify the most important ones from a conser- vation perspective, in order to set priorities for management actions. Published records and field data from 1990 onwards are filed. To date, the database contains 1243 records from 750 roosts, covering 352 10x10 km UTM grid-cells. Among roosts, 167 were used for hibernation (S roosts), 244 for breeding (R roosts) and 431 as either temporary roosts or for unknown needs, not verified or not consi- dered in the survey (X roosts). Roosting sites occurred in buildings (45.1%), caves (35.3%), artificial underground sites (10.3%), trees (5.5%), bridges (2.1%), bat boxes (1.3%) and rocky cliffs (0.4%). At least 29 species were found, and the number of roosts per species ranged between 1 and 261. S and/or R roosts fulfilling certain combinations of number of species and individuals or having at least 50 individuals of species cited in Annex II of the 92/43/EEC Directive (excluding Miniopterus schreibersii, adding Myotis punicus) were classified as sites of spe- cial conservation interest. When meeting at least one such conditions, type X roosts that were not classified as either S or R, were considered potential sites of special conservation interest, for which further data collection is recommended. In all, 97 roosts of special conservation interest were identified: 30 S roosts, 60 R roosts and 7 roosts selected for both hibernation and breeding. 20 X roosts were identified as potential sites of special conservation interest. For at least 93.7% of roosts, factors potentially harming the bats were documented, particu- larly people access to the roost, and renovation of buildings used as a roost. In almost two thirds of such cases it was judged that conservation was not ensured. Only 52.6% of roosts selected for their special conservation interest were located within protected areas, including areas proposed as Sites of Community Importance (92/43/EEC Directive). The situation is particularly remarkable in Sardinia, which hosts 24.7% of the selected sites of national importance, and only 29.2% of these are within protected areas. The results highlight major knowledge gaps, from both the geographical and species per- spectives. There is an urgent need to encourage roost surveying, activate roost protection mea