The media are all a flutter; ‘a bat shed will cost the tax payer £100m’ is the claim from, Sir Jon Thompson, a civil servant, who recently took over as boss of HS2 from Mark Thurston. Here are my first thoughts as a bat ecologist.

First of all, what on earth is a bat shed? I’ve never heard of one…

‘Bat shed’ is a cheeky jibe used by Sir Jon Thompson for a proposed scheme (which ironically he helped fight to gain planning for despite the local council rejecting it) to protect a rare Bechstein’s bat colony in Buckinghamshire, from the HS2 line. I have lots of experience with ecology work for large developments, including experience on HS2, and it is very common to hear these kind of bawdy, flippant, almost ‘Trumpian’ phrases when industry stakeholders are referring to wildlife protection – lots of times, it’s just a bit of banter on a work site, which I enjoy. However – I always find it somewhat bizarre when a high level politician or civil servant, such as Sir Jon Thompson, uses this kind of language, as the reason there is so much protection for wildlife in the UK, is presumably, because the people of the UK like wildlife. I suspect it’s an attempt to shift blame or, to be more charitable to Sir Jon, it could be a stunt to highlight inefficiencies with current UK wildlife legislation.

The structure is not really a shed, of course, it will be a 1km steel tunnel, which will dissect the ancient woodland – Sheephouse Wood in Buckinghamshire – home to the rare and elusive Bechstein’s bat.

First of all some basic debunking of very lazy claims

Claim 1: Sir John Thompson from this article claimed for bats that: ‘This is despite there being ‘no evidence’ that the trains will interfere with the mammals’ this is completely antithetical to the governments own blog on the subject :’There is ample evidence – despite claims made to the contrary – that they are at risk of colliding with high-speed trains.‘ oops, awkward…

Claim 2: Sir John Thompson claimed ‘The Bechstein’s bat was “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe” Southern England is about the top of Bechstein’s range – they are considered to be rare in western Europe hence why they are listed as an ‘Vulnerable‘ with a declining population trend. I don’t think a species or habitat being abundant in Europe is a good basis with which to treat our local nature.

Why on Earth are they building it?

All bats in the UK are protected, however some are more protected than others. The Bechstein’s bat is one of the more protected species due to it’s rarity. It pretty much exclusively resides in ancient woodlands, and only a handful of breeding sites are known in the UK.

I do not know the ecologist who worked on this project but I guaranteed they were stuck between a rock and a hard place, or rather a trainline and an ancient woodland. When dealing with projects that impact bats, ecologist must follow the mitigation hierarchy which goes like this:

Avoid the works? The most favourable methos for obvious reasons. This would not have been an option. A tunnel underneath the woodland was deemed too expensive, and HS2 they could no curve around the woodland (typically because too many bends in the line they would ruin the ‘speed’ aspect of high speed rail.

Mitigate the works? This is the option the bat tunnel falls under – for unavoidable works which cannot be compensated for (see below) the only method an ecologist could suggest would be to fence off, or in this case totally cover the train line to mitigate impacts on the bats. It seems very unlikely the ecologists working on this project had any other choice when the decision to place the line through the ancient woodland with rare bats was already made.

Compensate the works? This, in combination with mitigation, is used for lots of above ground areas of HS2 – it is much more cost effective for areas of farmland and lower quality habitats. It would be very difficult to compensate for loss, disturbance and degradation of an ancient woodland which Bechstein bats use, therefore this was likely not an option for the ecologists. However, in hindsight I wonder if this would have actually been a better option given the costs involved – more on that at the end.

Why is it so expensive?

The original cost was actually 40 million which made slightly smaller headlines when it was first announced, but still seems far too expensive to me. It will be the first structure of its kind in the world – which no doubt increases the design and implementation costs.

From a bat ecologists point of view, all that needs doing is to cover the train lines to prevent strikes and reduce disturbance – does this really require a 10s of millions of pound steel-mega structure? Maybe, I am no architect or engineer.

Do Ecologist agree with this?

I do not speak for anyone else however I have been reading about this all morning on various bat ecologist Facebook groups and talking with colleagues and the majority seem to agree that this expenditure is disproportionate, they are also disappointed that this has been blamed entirely on the bats.

The ‘bat bible’ for mitigation aptly named ‘The Bat Mitigation Guidelines‘ says in the first sentence on ‘Predicting the Impacts of Developments on bats’, Chapter 4.1: ‘A robust approach to impact assessment is one of the key elements necessary as a baselines from which to design effect and proportionate mitigation‘.

Why didn’t the Government see this coming?

‘That’s my favourite one because it involves the bat. 

‘People then have this simplistic way of saying, ‘oh, you’ve gone over the budget’. 

‘Well, yeah, OK but do people think about the bat?’  –  The Financial Times:

-Sir Jon Thompson

This is an interesting quote. Bat legislation has not changed from when the government proposed HS2, why would they not have factored this in when carrying out the financial review? The ‘people’ mentioned above who should have been thinking about bat legislation were the government, since it’s their legislation in the first place. Ancient woodlands are home to rare animals + rare animals are heavily protected in the UK + the scheme was going to go through the middle of some of these ancient woodlands.

Final Thoughts

If I was being uncharitable, I would say this is essentially the Government, complaining to themselves, about their own inability to navigate their own legislation. It’s almost like a meta Stewart Lee joke.

However, I do agree with Sir Jon’s general view that UKs legislative and bureaucratic process, when it comes to wildlife legislation, is not only heavy handed, but it is so heavy handed that it sometimes actually detracts from true wildlife conservation – I would argue that even 1/10th of the 100 million price tag for this project, spent on bat conservation in the area, would have been more beneficial to bats (and indeed other wildlife) as a whole than constructing a 1km long tunnel will be. But that’s just me, let me know what you think in the comments!