Mike Dilger’s wildlife watching
In his series of great places to watch wildlife in the UK, the star of BBC One’s The One Show this month reveals why overlooked roadside verges are a vital habitat for flora and fauna.
Got an urge for a verge? Top tips for spotting species along our roadsides
While Britain’s land may still be considered as green and pleasant, it is also bisected and crisscrossed by an awful lot of roads. According to the most recent census by the Department for Transport in 2017, the total public road length in England, Scotland and Wales was close to 400,000km. And while road verge area is somewhat more difficult to estimate, it’s believed to cover about 212,000ha, equivalent in size to the county of Nottinghamshire.
So, you could say that road verges are the ‘lost country’ of Britain, hidden in plain sight and yet a natural goldmine for all manner of wildlife. Frequently as old
or even older than the roads themselves, many of these interconnected scraps of land should be considered as fragments of unimproved or semi-natural grassland – a habitat that has disappeared across much of the UK. According to the charity Plantlife, these linear nature sites collectively contain about 720 species of wildflower – nearly 45 per cent of our flora.
But these botanically rich networks don’t just contain quantity; by acting as a vital refuge for over 10 per cent of the country’s rarest plants, they patently contain quality as well. Of course, roads are constructed to increase the ease of connectivity between town and country, and home and work. But it should come as no surprise that their attendant verges have coincidentally ‘evolved’ into becoming important wildlife corridors, allowing the dispersal of plants and pollinating insects, while also providing ideal hunting grounds for bats and birds of prey. If all this wasn’t evidence enough