Kate MacAney

Advocate for the lesser horseshoe bat and other animals.

About Kate MacAney

Kate has been fascinated by bats since a pipistrelle flew into her mother’s kitchen one evening in the summer of 1980. She encountered her first lesser horseshoe bat in a cave in County Clare in April 1983 when she began research on the summer behaviour of the species as a student at the university in Galway.

In 1991 she joined the Vincent Wildlife Trust, a UK mammal conservation and research charity, and has spent most of the three decades since then focussed on conserving the lesser horseshoe bat in Ireland and more recently the pine marten and Irish stoat. She retired from the Trust in August 2026 but will continue to highlight the importance of dark skies for nocturnal life forms.

Successfully navigating a career in wildlife without a sense of direction!

Sunday 1 November
Mulranny Arts Centre
Four decades of bats, wildlife conservation and occasionally getting lost along the way.

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