Wildlife havens

From The Evening Standard:

Engineers building the UK’s largest deep-sea port have had to relocate about 350,000 animals before beginning construction of the terminal.

The creators of the DP World-owned London Gateway "super-port" spent nearly four years moving rare species from the site near Thurrock in Essex. Experts found new homes for 350,000 animals including 625 adders, 323 water voles and about 5,000 great crested newts. It was the largest relocation of animals carried out in Europe.

Fair enough so far, they're building a massive new terminal and it's not too much to ask they they spend one or two per cent of their budget on making new homes for cute little furry and swimmy things...

Construction work began in January 2010 on the site of a former Shell oil refinery. When complete, it will be the largest deep-sea port in the UK, able simultaneously to unload six of the world’s biggest ships, each capable of carrying 18,000 containers.

Marcus Pearson, London Gateway’s environmental manager, told The Daily Telegraph how the site, closed by Shell in 1999, had become a haven for rare wildlife. "It was like a playground for all the protected species," he said. "It was wild. The ones that were most of a surprise were the adders. We had hundreds of them, hanging from the fence."

Environmental workers built huge new ponds for the great crested newts. "They are meant to be rare but we found 5,000 of them," said Mr Pearson. "We have dug 50 ponds at a new location, the size of 16 Olympic pools."

Having read that, I do wonder whether they are overdoing it.

It would appear that the only thing which the cute little furry and swimmy things really need is to be left in peace; I would imagine that the site of a former oil refinery is pretty much as environmentally degraded, polluted and downright un-natural as you can get, but the little things were perfectly happy to make it their home as best they could. They couldn't give a toss whether they live in a cave or in an empty building; whether they live in a pond or in a flooded basemenet.

I read an article about the abandoned area round Tchernobyl a couple of years ago, which is a wildlife haven as well, bats, bears, deer, you name it. One of the nature-protection people they spoke to said the best way to protect wildlife in an area would simply be to detonate a dirty bomb, thus ensuring that no human in his right mind would go within twenty miles of the place for the next few centuries.