Diggers in to create badger homes
News Archive > General > Diggers in to create badger homes
2009 for up to 200 new homes and employment space for 30 jobs, and the Duchy is expecting to start developing the site next year, subject to the outcome of reserved matters.
However, three or four badgers have made the site their home and developers must make them comfortable elsewhere before full planning approval can be considered. Peanuts and hay are being used to tempt them into their new lodgings at the north of the site, away from the prime development area.
The relocation, which has a special licence granted by Natural England, has to be done before November, while the badgers are active and not breeding.
ADAS, the UK’s largest independent provider of environmental consultancy, rural development services and policy advice, is managing the relocation.
Wildlife specialist Barbara Bell said: “We think there are three or four badgers on site who have used various holes in the past, so what we are doing now is persuading them to take up residence in their new home, consisting of four hay-filled chambers connected by pipework.
“We’ve been feeding the badgers on site for some time in the area of the new artificial sett and we’re using peanuts to encourage them in. Some of the hay has been pulled from the chambers into the pipework so that would suggest they are already starting to explore.”
The Tregunnel Hill development is part of a greater plan to create 700 new homes and almost 600 new jobs two miles east of the town in the Newquay Growth Area.
The scheme has courted controversy since it first surfaced over a decade ago, with environmental campaigners mourning the loss of green land.
Resident June Fullwood, who is also a member of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, has reservations about the damage the development will cause to the environment.
She said: “I was very anxious to learn that a badger sett found on site was going to be relocated. Over the August bank holiday weekend mechanical vehicles were seen on site – they were cutting back a lot of hedgerows down to the cornish stone walling.”
Cornwall Wildlife Trust’s Deputy Conservation Manager, Cheryl Marriott, said that the “biodiversity value of the existing habitats was not particularly high” on the site.
She added: “The applicant explained that they would provide a landscape scheme designed to be beneficial to wildlife, through the use of native species and provision of traditional Cornish walls as boundary features.”
