The specialists of the Centre of Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Feldman Ecopark Anton Vlashchenko and Kseniia Kravchenko took part in the International Symposium on the Effects of Light Pollution on Bats, which took place in Berlin (Germany) in the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research.
The specialists note that not many people in Eastern Europe think about the fact that street lighting significantly violates the natural biological rhythms of people and animals. The nocturnal animals are especially vulnerable, as a light source for them is either an attractive signal (nocturnal insects), or a dangerous zone, where a predator may be on the watch for them. Bats belong to the second group. Moreover, they eat insects, which fly to the light and die.
“Although there is a group of bats (pipistrelles), which prefer hunt near the street lights, the majority of European bats avoid illuminated lands and territories. Busy highways and speedways illuminated at night time, may become an insuperable obstacle for bats,” Anton Vlashchenko emphasizes. “A wide range of issues connected with this point were discussed during the Berlin Symposium: the available data about the influence of light on bats; the lamps of what light spectrum attract or frighten bats more or less; how to locate street lamps correctly in order to reduce the influence of light on the animals, and, at the same time, not to remain in darkness.”
The impact of night-time light on the nature, namely the illumination of religious buildings and structures and tourist attractions (churches, castles, fortress ruins), was also discussed during the symposium. The reports were presented by the specialists from Germany, France, Israel, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. The experts noted that in Ukraine, the influence of night-time light on biodiversity hasn’t been studied properly so far.
“It should be emphasized that the artificial night light negatively influences people as well, as the biological rhythms shift, the balance of synthesis of hormone changes, the metabolism is disturbed, and the stress intensifies. In the Internet, we often encounter the visualization of Earth illuminated by the light of the cities at night from the space. It is already impossible to see the stars in the sky from the big streets of megalopolises. As the result, people started to create reserves of dark night sky in densely populated areas of Europe and Asia, which become more and more popular among tourists wishing just to look at the sky of stars,” Kseniia Kravchenko noted.
