Background
The now-cancelled Highways England’s A358 dualling project involved widening a carriageway from Taunton to Southfields, essentially creating a dual carriageway link from London to South Wales. In October 2024, the government cancelled the proposal, describing it as unaffordable and unfunded.
Scope of services
Before its cancellation, we undertook several ecological surveys owing to the project’s impact on woodland, hedgerows, waterbodies and grassland habitats. Our project programme involved completing
- ground truthing, habitat suitability index, eDNA and traditional surveys for great crested newts
- reptile habitat assessments and presence/absence surveys, along with population size class estimates
- breeding bird surveys
- water vole and otter surveys
- inspections of and assessments for all trees within 45 land parcels and detailed potential roost feature (PRF) inspections of trees identified to contain moderate or high suitability for roosting bats
- aquatic surveys of 21 waterbodies and macrophyte and fish surveys.
Impact
Our large team of terrestrial and aquatic ecologists had the expertise to carry out the requisite baseline ecological surveys to support the client throughout the environmental impact assessment process.