Check out the traffic beneath a legacy bridge threatened by National Highways’ infill programme. This railway might be dismantled but it’s not disused: wildlife has reclaimed it to become a natural highway. But the structure could yet be consumed by 2,000 tonnes of aggregate and concrete, blighting the environment and damaging the local ecosystem.

“The potential fragmentation of a natural habitat system by the infilling of rail transport infrastructure is likely to be significant”, says Dr Niall Burnside, a landscape ecologist. “The great importance of green bridges and other forms of wildlife passage have been documented repeatedly over the last 25 years. This significance is recognised at a European level where the high connectivity importance of disused rail infrastructure - irrespective of its direct biodiversity importance - for migration, dispersal or foraging routes is highlighted.”

Whilst the state-owned roads company has been forced to wake up to the value of the Historical Railways Estate - which it manages on the Department for Transport’s behalf - for future walking and cycling schemes, it refuses to acknowledge the important role it plays within our network of wildlife routes.

We’ve asked the DfT to commission independent ecological studies of the corridors spanned by structures currently under threat. Many are at sites on the Priority Habitat Inventory or in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. They’re too important to lose through ignorance or outdated culture.

If you’ve not already done so, could you please support our Ministerial request by signing the petition set up by our campaigning friends at Barcombe, East Sussex, where the future of an established wildlife corridor hangs in the balance.

https://www.change.org/protect-railway-wildlife-corridors

Thank you.