Call for night cat curfews to save bats

CAT owners should keep their pets inside at night to save bats from being attacked, a conservationist has urged.

Failing that, they should be stopped from going out around sunset when bats are at their most vulnerable.

A quarter of a million bats are killed by cats every year, it is estimated, and they are one of the main reasons bats end up in wildlife rescue centres.

‘It can really make a big difference,’ Beth Gerrard of the University of the West of England told the Cheltenham Science Festival. Of Britain’s 18 bat species, four are ‘vulnerable’ and two ‘near-threatened’.