Monitoring visits are an important part of the LIFE project. This time we met at our partners in Romania, the largest bat conservation association in the country – CCCL, Centrul pentru Cercetarea și Conservarea Liliecilor. The visitor was Ms Marta Kaczyńska, the project’s external monitor for technical and financial monitoring of LIFE projects. During the meeting we reported on the progress of the project in all countries. Thanks to the online connection, all partners participated in the meeting. We presented information that will soon be included in the next mid-term report.
In Romania, we were able to see the results of the work done by our South Carpathian partners. We visited several caves where bat protection measures were carried out by replacing and inserting grilles to protect against excessive penetration by tourists or cavers. We also visited an adit where the crumbling ceiling and entrance section had been reinforced.
We reached the Danube, which showed us its strength and power over the local caves. Some of them we could only access by water. The entrances to these caves were situated a dozen metres above the bottom of the river valley before the dam was built. Today, the river flows just below the entrance holes, and one of the caves is even partially flooded.
Monitoring visit meetings are a time when we can see live places that we have only known so far from photos, reports or stories. Only on the ground do we see how difficult some of the conservation measures that we and our partners have undertaken in the LIFE project are proving to be.
One example that is still pending is a narrow path over a 20-metre cliff, which has to be partitioned off to prevent unauthorised access to this particularly valuable cave for bats. The degree of difficulty of the work proved unacceptable to most contractors and none wanted to take on such a breakneck job.It was only Romanian mountaineers, armed with equipment, skills and experience of working in rocks and at height, who were able to pick up the gauntlet and are planning to start installing the special fence soon.
During the meeting, we jointly reviewed the progress of the project, and also discussed the difficulties encountered and how to introduce countermeasures. There was also time to eavesdrop on horseshoe bat activity in the evening. This time, some cousins of our flagship species were among them.
The Southern Carpathians are a bat sanctuary of European importance. The time spent in Romania and the accompanying natural circumstances will remain in our memories for a long time: caves, rock walls and the middle of a golden autumn in the Danube Gorge, at the foot of the Iron Gate.
Plus meeting the fascinating people with whom we formed our team. The monitoring visit gave us the confidence that the project was proceeding as planned and on schedule, and that we should be able to cope with the difficulties we encountered together.
