There are a lot of areas with the high density of old mines in Slovakia. The old mines are used by bats as a wintering roost sites or as appropriate sites to create the summer aggregations (e. g. Miniopterus schreibersii, Rhinolophus euryale, Rhinolophus hipposideros - Revúcka highland). Most of the underground mines are not secured against the entry and movement around the entrances is dangerous to man. The open old mines have negative impact to the economic area utilization and mostly they make problems in regional development. For these reasons they are in the process of intentional destruction recently (e. g. sealing the entrances of mines, bombing out the old mines). The basic problem is that only a few people deal with the protection issue of old mines as underground roosts of bats in Slovakia. Information on the occurrence of bat colonies in the old mines, is found out by experts only at random. The protection of bats in Slovakia requires concentrated support and needs to obtain the new field information. Also, the current data of the occurrence necessary to ensure protection of target species' populations are not sufficient. To ensure protection of the ímportant shelters used by bats, it is important to know their exact location and to what extent they are occupied by bats.
At present, the State Geological Institute and old mines societies deal with the issue much more than the State Nature Conservancy and Bat Protection Society. This situation causes disadvantageous impact on target species of bat populations. The goal of the project is to identify the significant underground roost sites and provide their protection, in accordance with the requirements of the legislation (The Act No. 543/2002 Coll. on the Protection of Nature and Landscape as last amended, and The Act No. 44/1988 Coll. on the Protection and Utilization of Mineral Resources, as last amended). By implementation of the project activities we would like to make a compromise between security of local citizens (ensure a safety of people) and protection of bats (preserve significant underground roost sites). The project proposal is response to CMS (Res. 9.1) and EUROBATS priorities for the Implementation of Conservation and Management Plan and to Guidelines for the Protection and Management of Important Underground Habitats for Bats (Res. 2.2, Res. 4.3, Res. 4.9, Res. 5.4, Res. 6. 16).
The project areas are two important mining areas in Slovakia - Revúcka highland and Štiavnické mountains -the areas where Miniopterus schreibersii and Rhinolophus euryale (and more other species of bats) occur in the old mine spaces.
Project implementers are experts in the area of chiropterology with wide experiences (manipulation with bats by netting, determining the species), members of the Slovak Bat Conservation Society and students of natural sciences.

Strategy of project implementation:
The database of the State Geological Institute of Dionyz Stur contains a list of several thousands of sites of old mines in Slovakia. It serves as the basis for further treatment of the old mines (to make a proposal for demolition, or other alternative use of these objects). We will obtain information about the type and the exact coordinates of the old mines, which will be our basic tool in the field research.
We will create more working groups to undertake a systematic field survey. The old mines are “live spaces”, where the soil erosion comes up and the depressions are formed constantly. The collapse of underground spaces could have caused the creation of the new holes and entrances to the mines, which are not recorded in the database. The goal of the field work is to locate possibly all the present entrances to old mines in the project areas. Important step is to establish cooperation with local inhabitants (mushroom pickers, hunters), geologists and foresters, which know the areas and the old mines occurrence very well. Usually, within this kind of field work, we create a group of people (team) who work a few days constantly in the field, more times throughout the year. As a result of field survey we will make a list of localized old mines (by means of GPS) with description of some field charakteristics and the output in GIS program.
Monitoring of bat population occurrence in the localized old mines will be implemented by dettectoring and netting methods, and by census of bats in their hibernation sites in winter (if possible). The data acquired will be summarize in the database.
In the case of some old mine identified as a significant roost site (high number of bats, periodically inhabiting the spaces), we will begin communication with relevant authorites to ensure its protection. In collaboration with old mine societies, we will elaborate project documentation to secure the safety of these sites. The results and methods of these activities will form the final reporting document and will be used as a pilot study with recommendations on procedure and approach in other mining areas in Slovakia. The protection of the roost sites of bats in the old mines is an international trouble. Our aim is to publicize reached results (new protected sites/areas) on the international level. The ways and means we applied to ensure protection of the old mine roost sites can be very good example for other countries.