English cemeteries, nature reserves?

This video is called Nimbus Nature Trail presents – The Common Pipistrelle.

From the BBC:

24 August 2012 Last updated at 01:25

Can city cemeteries be nature reserves?

By Victoria Gill and Karen Millington

A sea of gravestones etched with the names of lost loved ones might not be what you would picture when you imagine a nature reserve.

But Manchester City Council plans to give Southern Cemetery in south Manchester, which is the largest cemetery in the UK, that official title.

According to Natural England, it will be one of just 10 graveyard nature reserves in England. And it is part of a bigger plan in Manchester to put cemeteries “on the map” for nature-loving urbanites.

…

Clare Sefton, from the South Lancashire bat group, has carried out bat surveys in Southern Cemetery.

She has found three of the UK’s 18 bat species in the cemetery.

“As well as common pipistrelles, we’ve recorded soprano pipistrelles and noctule bats, which are the UK’s largest species,” she told the BBC.

She explained that the flying mammals hunt for insects among the cemetery’s avenues of mature deciduous trees.

“The cemetery provides an insect-rich habitat in a largely urban area which is a great haven for feeding bats along with some large, old trees which could support bat roosts,” she said.