Bat Populations in Norfolk - is a European trend true here?

I was recently interviewed by the Eastern Daily Press and the Yarmouth Advertiser and asked to comment on the European Environment Agency research which claims that the total number of bats has increased by 43% from 1993 to 2011.

In the study the team counted bats at 6,000 sites in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and the UK.

This was reported in many newspapers including:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/30/european-bat-population-rises

If this is really factual, it masks the continuing drop in bat populations across East Anglia which should be of concern to bat conservationists.

Of course it may have been issued to try to justify the time and money spent by various organisations now involved with bats.

The article is shown below: