Towards understanding and resolving conflicts of bat presence and maintenance of buildings of cultural heritage in Slovenia

Castles, churches and other buildings of cultural heritage (BCH) play an essential role for a number of bat species across Europe.Maintaining bat roosts in such manmade structures is a very specific conservation problem, as owners or managers of BCH need to be persuaded to accept bats in their buildings, mostly in connection with the additional workload caused by cleaning bat guano.Addressing this problem is one of the focuses of the LIFE integrated project for enhanced management of Natura 2000 in Slovenia (LIFE-IP NATURA.SI).As a strong scientific basis is an integral part of nature conservation communication, we have analysed data on the presence of bats in BCH in Slovenia (an area of 20,271 km 2 or about 250150 km).