Advancing transboundary bat conservation in Romania and Moldova, 2020-2021

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In frame of the project, the team organized the 4th Romanian Bat Research Conference (online) in October 2020, with 10 presentations and 39 participants from 4 countries: Romania, Moldova, Serbia and Poland. The conference benefitted also from sponsorship offered by Pettersson Elektronik AB, Natural Timber and Lotek and technical support was offered by the NGO TechSoup. A workshop for team members outlined the key elements of the online bat database of Romanian and Moldova, while the IT expert created the actual online elements based on this workshop. Currently 88 literature sources from Romania and Moldova were processed, resulting in 5.631 individual bat records for the database. Throughout the project, we raised awareness about the Romanian and European Bat of the Years 2020-2021, B. barbastellus, using online and offline methods. The printed materials about the species reached 42 entities (bat researchers, NGOs, protected areas, local and national authorities) from 10 countries: Romania, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Serbia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In frame of the fieldwork of the project, we involved new people interested in bat research (university students, members of the Academy of Sciences, and protected area personnel), monitored known colonies and surveyed in premiere several areas lacking bat data. Fieldwork supplied new data about 19 bat species: B. barbastellus, E. serotinus, M. bechsteinii, M. blythii, M. dasycneme, M. daubentonii, M. myotis, M. mystacinus, M. nattereri, M. schreibersii, N. noctula, P. auritus, P. austriacus, P. nathusii, P. pipistrellus, P. pygmaeus, R. ferrumequinum, R. hipposideros, V. murinus.