Wildlife and roads

I’d like to know if your council has a location (e.g. grid reference), road number and installation date for road warning signs that include ‘Wild animals’ (i.e. deer), ‘Wildfowl’ and ‘Migratory toad crossing’ (and any other signage relating to wild animals e.g. otters).

Devon County Council do not hold this information

Additionally, if possible, I would like information on the installation date and location (e.g. grid reference) of any wildlife mitigation for roads, including any green bridges, tunnels, pipes, ledges, wildlife fencing/barriers.

Devon County Council do not hold a central record of this information.   We can confirm the following:

• The installation of wildlife mitigation is a standard expectation for any significant road scheme, in line with national policy and guidance.
• On this basis, a variety of mitigation measures, including of the types which have been listed in the question, have been installed as an integral component of many road schemes across Devon over many years.
• Whilst there will be detailed engineering drawings for every scheme which do illustrate such measures, there is no realistic way of coming up with a complete list of all road schemes, deciding which of these incorporated such wildlife mitigation measures and then going through and systematically identifying and documenting these.

To review every single road scheme and every engineering drawing, as described above, over, say, the last 20 years, to identify the mitigation which may be currently in place would be too burdensome a task and it would be manifestly unreasonable, pursuant to Regulation 12 (4) (b) of the Environmental Information Regulations.   We do appreciate that there is a public interest in disclosure and if you were to return to us with a specific area of the county that you are interested in and a limited time period, we would be happy to review your request and provide any available information we hold concerning road schemes for that area and that time period.