Barn owl survey licences

Following our recent attendance at two excellent courses run by the Barn Owl Trust we are now both registered to use Natural England class licence CL29 - "To survey for barn owl (Tyto alba) for the purposes of assessing the potential impacts of future development".

Many of the buildings we already survey for bats in rural areas have the potential to support roosting or nesting barn owl, which are protected from disturbance whilst nesting. This licence will allow us to legally disturb nesting barn owl for the purposes of pre-development surveys.

A barn owl chick we got to see up-close whilst on the Barn Owl Trust course

The welfare of the barn owls is paramount when undertaking surveys - knowing when it is safe to stay or when it is essential to leave a nest site is crucial in ensuring that the eggs or young in the nest are not harmed.

This along with the many useful facts and techniques we learnt on the Barn Owl Trust courses will help us confidently advise our clients on barn owl conservation on their sites.

More details of this and our other recent activities will be in our summer edition of "The Nutshell" which will be available soon....