More than 2,000 reptiles moved for A417 Missing Link road project

  • ITV News' Ken Goodwin went along to meet some of those behind the project

More than 2,000 reptiles were relocated to make way for the next stage of a major infrastructure project near Gloucester.

The A417 Missing Link project at Birdlip involves dualling the road between Cowley Roundabout and the bottom of Crickley Hill.

It is currently single-carriageway, often causing a bottleneck for the 40,000 drivers using it every day.

Project director Steve Foxley said: "So the intention this year is to try to move 80% of the earth that we’ve got to get out of the ground.

"So effectively we dig this area we are standing on up and we move 800,000 tonnes of earth down towards Cowley, and we move 500,000 tonnes of earth down towards Gloucester so that’s approximately 400 Olympics swimming pools, by volume, of earth."

The proposed A417 Gloucester Way Green Bridge Credit: National Highways

Before the heavy digging work started, there was a lot of preparation work to do, including catching and moving wildlife.

Natasha James, lead ecologist, said: "So initially we installed around 8,000 metres of reptile fencing, and then we set about doing a large scale reptile transit to location.

"We moved over 2,000 reptiles. We had 80 adders and 10 of those adders, we put tiny little radio tags on them and did some radio-telemetry to find, once they had moved to the receptor sites.

"We then could track their movements to see how they responded so it’s a really exciting project to get some really valuable data."

More than 2,000 reptiles have been relocated. Credit: ITV West Country

An archeological survey was also carried out as the area already has a rich Roman history.

Alex Thomson from Oxford Cotswold Archeology said they had found three broaches from the Roman period. He has also found a Roman spoon.

Mr Thomson said: "It’s a really nice window into the lives of the average Roman person.

"I think the best thing about this project has been yes we knew what was going to be here but being able to tie it all together in a huge landscape.

"This game is a big scheme and something we don’t usually get to see on this scale," he said.

National Highways says the scheme should be finished by 2027.

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