Europe’s largest bat colony during wintertime is situated in a cave in (Romania – the editor) Trascau Mountains (center-west) called ‘Huda Lui Papara’, where nine species of bats are hibernating, according to researches made by biologists of Cluj-Napoca.
President of the Sfinx Girda de Sus Speleological Association, Christian Ciubotarescu said in a news release that last winter as many 84,000 bats hibernated in the cave, whereas the second largest hibernacula is situated in Poland, where 22,000 bats hibernate. According to the studies made by professor dr. Ioan Coroiu of the Faculty of Biology with Babes-Bolyay University of Cluj-Napoca, most bats originate from four species, although there are bats of nine species in the cave.
The cave is situated in Salciua locality, being the longest of Trascau Mountains, Mount Bedeleu, at an altitude of 567 metres. Since 1979 speleology club ‘Polaris’ Blaj has been exploring and recharting the cave, managing to include it into the tourist circuit, however it was partially destroyed because high floods in 1986. In 2002 Polaris again committed to design the cave for visitors by a European Union-funded programme in cooperation with Albamont Association.(original here)
One Comment
We are monitoring a winter colony of Miniopterus in southern
iberian peninsula were up to 30.000-40.000 bats get together (and two
70′s censuses talked about 50.000-100.000!). This cave together with an
old train tunnel are the biggest winter colonies in Spain.
We are now writting the chapter about bats for a book about this cave (Hundidero-Gato, in Málaga)
Does anyone know the biggest wintering colony in Europe and Northern
Africa? We need some further info about those 84.000 bats in order to quote it.
Juan