Bat boxes and beach cleanups: Summer work for St. Alban's Green Team

A group of students on Newfoundland's south coast is doing more than beach cleanups this summer: the Green Team in St. Alban's is also working to protect the area's brown bat population.

"Bats just won't hurt you. They're pretty harmless," said team member Julie Young.

Young told CBC Radio's Central Morning Show that bat conservation became part of the job at the request of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, one of the team's sponsors.

"They asked us to build alternate bat habitats because they are doing some renovations to their generating station, and they're afraid of disrupting some bat habitats, so we are building some alternate shelters called bat boxes."

The boxes are nearly as big as a person.

"They are tall and they have chambers inside for the bats to roost … life is good, they're happy in there," said Young.

While three types of bats live in the province, she said brown bats are the most common and not very scary because they are so small.

Construction materials to cars

Besides building bat boxes, the Green Team has been hard at work this summer organizing shoreline cleanups around the Coast of Bays area, from Conne River to Gaultois.

"It's a bit of a daunting task at first, not going to lie, but when it all comes together, it's really nice," said Young.

The team has found the expected litter — "rope and plastic, construction material as well as household debris that sometimes blows off landfills into our oceans," Young said.

But some of what they found was not so expected.

"Last year me and my boss Roberta found a car … an abandoned car, it was old. I hauled a piece off it," said Young.

The car was too heavy to move, but the Green Team was able to get rid of pieces that posed a hazard.

'Passionate about the environment'

Students will sort through the garbage they collect this summer to bring more information to the public.

"Me and my team members will analyze all the debris found to find out where it came from and how we can prevent it from ending up on our beaches again," said Young, who is an engineering student at Memorial University.

"I'm really passionate about the environment … because this is going to be our world."

The Green Team is a project of the Conservation Corps Newfoundland and Labrador.