ACSA is very pleased to announce that the 2024 ACSA Seed Grant has been awarded to Kelly Sheldrick and the Conservation Council of WA. This year, the Seed Grant is a combination of $2,000 in financial support, along with additional benefits to be discussed – such as mentoring, grant writing support, promotion, or other non-financial assistance.
This grant will go towards “quantifying the power of citizen science to change perspectives of an historically unloved taxa, bats, and collectively identifying effective conservation actions to support bats in a sprawling city”.
Conservation Council of WA
Kelly Sheldrick
The negative perception towards bats has impacted their conservation and research. This has led to bats being missed from grassroots initiatives and land management plans, as well as led to research gaps on bat conservation. Citizen science offers the opportunity to not only address some of these research gaps, but to positively influence attitudes towards bats, while identifying some of the threats and effective conservation actions that can be taken to support urban bat populations. We’ll be surveying citizen scientists before and after the acoustic surveys to assess the value of citizen science in:
1) reducing misinformation leading to negative perceptions of bats,
2) increasing the appreciation of bats, nature and the outdoors, and
3) assessing the wellbeing benefits of connecting to nature.
We’ll be using the acoustic survey results to test a bat call auto identifier, and to determine the impact of urbanisation on bats and identify potential conservation actions to take to support urban bat populations.
This project is being supported by City of Wanneroo and Murdoch University.
1) reducing misinformation leading to negative perceptions of bats,
2) increasing the appreciation of bats, nature and the outdoors, and
3) assessing the wellbeing benefits of connecting to nature.
We’ll be using the acoustic survey results to test a bat call auto identifier, and to determine the impact of urbanisation on bats and identify potential conservation actions to take to support urban bat populations.
This project is being supported by City of Wanneroo and Murdoch University.