Highway verges as wildlife habitats

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 13

Highway verges as wildlife habitats

Roadside verges in Britain, besides often being a pleasant part of the countryside, are a rich resource of plants and animals. Many of the country’s flowering plants some 600 species out of 2000 can be found on roadside verges. Among this luxuriant British flora an unexpectedly wide range of animals lives and breeds. According to the Nature Conservancy, they include 20 species of mammals, 40 birds, six reptiles, 25 butterflies, and eight species of bumblebee. *

Roadside verges cover more than 500,000 acres of Britain, or twice the area of all the nation’s 128 National Nature Reserves. But, unlike nature reserves, roadside verges are found almost everywhere; and the building of more roads, however unfortunate this may be for the countryside of Britain, does mean more verges. So they are therefore becoming important in nature conservation, especially as intensive agriculture and urban developments are all the time making other land less suitable for the survival of native plants and animals. Since 1954, the Nature Conservancy has been collaborating with the Ministry of Transport and local authorities to get a rational system of verge management established throughout Britain. Their objection is roadside verges that are both of high amenity value and managed in the best interests of nature conservation. Research by the Nature Conservancy staff shows that this can be done. Dr Michael Way and his colleagues at the Monks Wood Experimental Station have found that the greatest variety of plants and animals flourish on verges having differing heights of vegetation: a low cut sward by the road followed by a belt of taller grass and plants backed by a hedge —one third of the nation’s hedges, so important to wildlife, grow by the roadside. Verges of this kind can be maintained at no additional cost to verge management. Indeed, the Nature Conservancy’s research shows that verge management in some instances may have been costing too much because of too much verge cutting. So a verge with a well-

kept strip by the road and the rest left to grow in a much more natural fashion—as far as engineering needs and road safety allow—is best both for economic management and nature conservation. Verge management differs of course with the class of road. For an ordinary country road the strip of close-cut sward will be

only 4-sft wide but a motorway must have a strip at least 10ft wide. Motorway ■ verges are of particular interest to Dr Way and his colleagues. There are at present between 10,000 and 15,000 acres of motorway verges in Britain, and this area is growing rapidly: 600 miles of motorway in use, 350 miles under construction and another 400 miles planned

for construction in the next four years. And they are all managed by one organisation, the Ministry of Transport, and all free from public pressure, since the public is not allowed on motorway verges. They therefore offer an unusual opportunity to create valuable reservoirs of native wildlife in the wake of advancing transport technology.