Slow worms hold up car park

A colony of slow worms were discovered at the site

A colony of slow worms forced workers on a new car park to down tools while a special fence to protect the creatures was erected.

Work to turn an unused field into temporary car park in Monmouth had to be delayed by five weeks after environmental impact officers discovered a large population of the legless lizards at the site.

Monmouthshire Council, who are developing the site to replace one of the town's car parks while work on the Monnow Bridge is taking place, had to halt progress until a solution was found.

Now, a curved fence has been erected around the site in order to prevent the protected species from slithering onto the new car park.

David Harris, head of highways at the council, explained: "We had to provide a temporary car park and the site was chosen.

"It has been earmarked for future development, but has gone back to nature over the years.

Slow worms Also known as Anguis fragilis They look like snakes but are in fact legless lizards They measure between 30 and 50cm

"Before we carry out any development, we always do an environmental impact and we found out that there was a lot of slow worms there.

"Apparently it is a bit of a basking area for them.

"It was a bit of a surprise," he said.

The council enlisted the help of a local wildlife group to move the slow worms to a safe area of the site.

"Slow worms like to hide under things, so we put a lot of trays around the site which they used to hide under," said Mr Harris.

"We were able to go around and collect them safely and put as many as we could into the area we were not developing."

Fence

Council workers have been putting up a specially- designed fence around the site to prevent the creatures from getting into the car park.

"The fence is about a foot high and is curved, so they can't climb over it," said Mr Harris.

"There has been a cost to sort out the problem, but it isn't significant and we want to protect the wildlife," he added.

Work to put down temporary flooring on the site to set up the car park will finally begin on Monday after a five-week delay.

It is expected to take about 10 days for the work to be completed and the car park is expected to remain open until work on the replacement bridge has been completed in February.

Slow worms are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 from being killed, injured or sold and are less common than they used to be.