Dudley Street Lighting Scheme
As we move towards the darker nights, our team are busy working with Dudley Council to…
ENVIRONMENTAL MITIGATION
Relocating bats, trees, and newts at MIRA.
We are working with the Motor Research Industry Association (MIRA) to design and construct a new interchange, gatehouse, and access road for future development plots at their headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
With site clearance and drainage works underway, our on-site team are working closely with the client and ecologists, Middlemarch Environmental Ltd, to ensure these works are undertaken in an environmentally sensitive manner.
Bat surveys and inspections have been undertaken by hand on cottages, garages, and farm barns before demolition. Across the five-week programme, we used cherry pickers to enable roofing materials on each building to be removed by hand by operatives under the supervision of licensed bat workers. Nine bats, including several different species, were discovered during the inspections. All were safely removed, placed in bat boxes on site and have now been relocated.
Two maple trees, originally planted as memorials, have been relocated within the existing site using a tree spade. This spade excavated soil in the new location before the tree was lifted and excavated from its existing location with soil intact and moved in its entirety to the new location.
Two grey crested newts were also discovered during 30-day trapping activity undertaken across the site. Ecologists moved the newts found to a formed pond within the MIRA site.
Fitzgerald Contactors Managing Director, Nick Coley said:
“We take great pride in working with our clients and supply chain partners to deliver our works in a sensitive and sustainable manner and in a way that protects the environment. It was a privilege for our team to work alongside skilled ecologists and environmentalists and ensure that this initial phase of works is done as sensitively as possible.”
Our work continues our existing relationship with MIRA following previous work in 2015 to upgrade the existing site access and provide a new spine road.