Imagine: it’s Sunday morning, and the warden of a medieval village church arrives to get the place ready for communion only to find the altar covered in bat droppings.
As he gets scrubbing, he reflects on how he rang the officials at Natural England to request help getting rid of these bats — ‘Perhaps they could be relocated somewhere?’ he asked innocently — but their response was to read him the riot act about his responsibilities to the bats under EU law.
To fulfil its obligations, the church had to install a leaded ‘bat flap’ to let the creatures in and out — a dedicated window the bats can use to come and go as they please. And because the church is a Grade I listed building, it had to have one made up in the same material as the rest of the windows, at a cost of several hundred pounds.
Worse, the church has had to pay thousands to have an official bat survey done, to assess the extent and nature of their bat population.
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