[nightshade]

Originally Posted by wellies101

Hi All

I work in a country park (c. 200 acres) that is technically 13 years old as a park. Before this it was a gravel extraction site then landfill. Now it has neutral grassland meadows, lakes, reedbeds and wet woodlands and in my limited experience so far in conservation, this smacks of potential reptile habitat.

However, before I started (18 months ago) there had been no records of reptiles since the park opened. I put 12 reptile tins out along the edge of the park which runs along a railway line to check for their presence at the back end of this summer and we've had 2 juvenile grassy's during that time! However, they've not been recorded elsewhere on site and my concern is they are using the railway line as a wildlife corridor and not branching into the park and the rest of the habitat.

They would have one, maybe two, paths to cross, but they are only 1m wide at most. Then they are in meadows or scrub, perfect! I have spoken to Steve Langham @ SARG (not going against the advice you gave me then Steve, just thought I'd see if other people had other ideas) about how we try and encourage the reptiles "into" the park who gave me great advice. However, I just wanted to see if other people had any experience of how to potentially overcome obstacles such as this?

The alternative (again in discussion with Steve @ SARG about this) is to introduce reptiles into the heart of the park from a donor site that is being developed, therefore, losing the habitat completely.

Any thoughts?

The railway cutting enviroment possibly suits them better, where there are small populations there is no pressure to expand territory and "encouraging" them may not be the right thing to do