Natural Resources Wales North Wales Bat Roosts

Cofnod – North Wales Environmental Information Service

Description

Bat records from North Wales, including monitoring data from known bat roosts and some incidental bat rescue records. Derived from two electronic datasets held originally by CCW (Bat Roosts Database - Caernarvonshire and Anglesey and Bat Roosts Database - North East Wales).

This dataset includes Sensitive species records (as described in our Data Sourcing, Management and Use policy available from the Cofnod website), for which any attached comments have been removed (grid references and site names are automatically blurred by the Atlas).

Geographic Description

North Wales

Purpose

To record species distribution and details of bat roosts, to assist CCW's conservation work. In particular, to provide information when dealing with development proposals, to support the monitoring and notification of SSSIs, and to aid with the monitoring and reporting on the status and trends of protected bat species.

Data quality

This dataset brings together two earlier data compilations which varied slightly in the level of detail they contained. Additional information has been added from original sources for many of the records, by comparison with CCW regional files. This has also enabled the location details of some of the records to be checked, and in many cases a more detailed grid reference to be added. However not all records have been checked in this way.

All records have been screened to ensure that they have valid dates, species names and grid references. The records are all labelled with a Cofnod verification Level of Considered Correct by Cofnod, as they come from a trusted source., which equates to a Verification Status of Accepted. Details of Cofnod’s system of Dataset Categorisation and Record Verification are given within relevant Cofnod policies.

Data should be checked against original sources before use in contentious circumstances. Please contact Cofnod quoting the relevant occurrenceID if more information is required about a particular record.

Methods

Bat records from paper files held in CCW regional offices were compared with those held electronically within two CCW datasets (Bat Roosts Database - Caernarvonshire and Anglesey and Bat Roosts Database - North East Wales). (Bat Roosts Database - Merionethshire, also supplied to us, was duplicated in the dataset: Bat Roosts Database - Caernarvonshire and Anglesey.) Not all electronic records were checked but any which were found during a systematic sift through the regional files. Existing electronic records were improved by adding missing data which was present in their original paper source and by adding a reference to the file. For all records which were located in the regional files, their geographic location was checked on Ordnance Survey maps using GIS and, where necessary, moved to its correct or more accurate position. Further improvements were made to the dataset by comparison with an earlier version of the Bat Roosts Database - Caernarvonshire and Anglesey (GWYBATS) during early 2013. The original data was generated from visits to roosts by CCW or NCC staff and volunteers, from enquiries from members of the public received by CCW or NCC, and/or from specialist groups.

Citation

Natural Resources Wales North Wales Bat Roosts, COFNOD (2019)

Rights

OGL

Digitised records