A data base summarising distributional data on bats (Chiroptera) in Belgium was created by Jacques Fairon in the Section of Recent Vertebrates of the Royal Belgian Institute. Data go back to 1941 and originated mostly, until recently, from the activities of the now discontinued ringing scheme and from collaborators of a bat working group concentrating on the discovery and follow-up of roosts, mostly of winter roosts.

In recent years, it has also included data accumulated by specific schemes, in particular, bio-indicator environmental monitoring schemes in the Walloon and Brussels regions, a church-loft managing scheme of the Walloon Region, and European Union LIFE-Nature projects involving Wallonia, on the one hand, Brussels, on the other. It has also increasingly received data from ultra-sound observation of bats in open space, particularly in the Brussels and Flemish regions.

The data base is divided into three sections covering the three federated regions of Belgium, the Flemish Region, the Brussels Region and the Walloon Region. It is currently administered jointly by the Section of Conservation Biology of the Royal Belgian Institute and by the bat study groups of Natuurreservaten and Réserves Naturelles, these groups under the responsibility of Alex Lefèvre and Yves Servranckx, respectively. Its contents are available for nature conservation applications. A number of supporting documents on bat biology, distribution, identification and management are also available within the archives and working documents of the Section of Conservation Biology. Some are already available on-line, others will soon be.

The complete content of the three sections of the data base will be progressively offered on-line. At the moment, only an interpretation of selected results is available, in the form of a presentation originally prepared by Charles Vander Linden for a temporary exhibition, Bats: A World Upside Down, harboured at the Royal Belgian Institute. It is offered in English, French, Dutch and German. To view it, click on the left button, below. To return to the Data Base home page, click on the centre button. To return to the Section of Conservation Biology home page, click on the right button.