A nice home for bats: municipality seeks locations for bat boxes

More and more residents are making their homes more sustainable and insulating them. This is a positive development that the municipality is proud of. However, for bats, this means that their natural shelters are disappearing. To offer this protected species an alternative, the municipality is working with a nature contractor to find suitable locations for bat boxes. Residents who meet the conditions can now register.

An eye for nature

Alderman Marieke van den Boom: "Together we are creating a green and animal-friendly municipality." She emphasizes the importance of this initiative: "As a municipality, we encourage sustainability and energy conservation, but we also care about nature. Bats play an important role in our ecosystem, for example by eating insects. By creating new habitats, we ensure that they are not endangered. We hope that residents will sign up to offer these animals a safe place to live."

Property must meet certain conditions

Not all homes are suitable for a bat box. All conditions are listed on the municipality's website. Only corner houses, semi-detached houses, or detached houses built before 1990 are suitable. Another criterion is that the house must not have been retrofitted with insulation. The box is always placed on the end of the house.

Nature contractor takes care of everything for residents

A nature contractor checks whether the homes are suitable. They also look at the
distribution in the municipality, the wind direction, and the position of the sun. The municipality pays for the cabinets and their installation. There are no costs for residents. The contractor hopes to install the first cabinets before May 1, 2025.

Interested? Sign up and help give bats a safe place in our community! Together, we can make our environment greener and more animal-friendly.