Artificial roosts for bats: education and research. The “Be a Bat’s Friend” project of the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence

The project “BAT BOX: Be a Bat’s Friend” was launched in 2006 with the aim of spreading correct information about the ecological role of bats, rehabilitating their image and fostering the involvement of the public in conservation actions. A wooden, single- chamber bat box was designed and produced at low cost. Through collaboration with Coop, to date ca. 25000 bat boxes have been sold over much of the country at cost price. Private citizens, institutions and associations installed and monitored the boxes using a standard form for the collection of data. The sale of a range of project-related merchandising articles has raised funds used for bat research and conservation projects. Conferences, public meetings, school lessons, papers and an informative brochure helped to spread the aims of the project. In 2010, Disney Italia produced a new brochure and the educational comic strip “Donald Duck and Kiro the Bat”. The monitoring of bat boxes showed a progressive increase in the success of colonisation over time, up to 40.0%. In general, both time from installation and height above ground proved to significantly influence colonisation success.