The UK's largest wildlife bridge will be built in Gloucestershire by 2027, as part of a partnership between Natural England and National Highways.
The bridge is part of the A417 Missing Link project, which aims to deliver four miles of safer road while conserving and enhancing the natural character, beauty and wildlife of the Cotswolds National Landscape.
A significant part of the £460 million A417 project is the Gloucestershire Way bridge. The 37-metre-wide multi-purpose crossing will feature a 27-metre strip of calcareous grassland and hedgerow, and access will be available for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.
Native hedgerow will be planted either side, which aims to help bats and other animals such as barn owls to use the bridge as a commuting corridor. Grassland and scattered trees will enable species such as deer and reptiles to cross. The bridge has been designed to connect habitats that would be otherwise fragmented by the road, as well as to encourage wildlife to use it. It will be monitored to ensure uptake by species and to check that the habitats are thriving.
As part of the wider A417 scheme, National Highways and Natural England have committed to:
- Planting over 100,00 trees and over 8 hectares of calcareous grasslands
- Adding a dedicated bat underpass, as well as bat boxes, structures and habitats (such as dead hedging) to support local bat populations
- Putting up high fencing during construction to alter the flight paths of birds, to limit collisions with cars (this will be taken down after construction)
- Translocating over 2,000 reptiles and over 100 Roman snails
- Constructing 7.5km of drystone walling, in keeping with the current landscape and supporting biodiversity
Natural England and National Highways signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the A417 Missing Link project, which outlines the framework for collaboration between the two organisations. Its primary aim is to improve environmental outcomes along the Strategic Road Network.
National Highways' executive director of major projects, Nicola Bell, said: "Our work goes beyond just operating and maintaining our roads and by collaborating more closely with Natural England, we can ensure that our infrastructure projects deliver better outcomes for both people and nature."
"Projects like the A417 showcase the positive outcomes for people and nature that can be achieved by working closely together," said Natural England's chief executive, Marian Spain. "This memorandum is an important step in embedding this open, early, constructive communications between Natural England and National Highways to deliver our shared objectives of sustainable development."
The Gloucestershire Way bridge comes after the construction of similar wildlife bridges as part of other National Highways projects.
It has also been announced that several green bridges will be built across the HS2 railway, with the Turweston Green Bridge (on the outskirts of Brackley, Northamptonshire) measuring 99 metres wide – a distance that would trump the Gloucestershire Way bridge by 62 metres.
Main image: National Highways
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