Cockrow Bridge in Surrey will open in the coming weeks to provide wildlife, including lizards and insects, with the ability to move between fragmented habitats

W

hen James Herd moved near to Wisley Common 17 years ago, the heathland nature reserve was teeming with wildlife. “I’d take the dog around the common in spring and summer, and every few hundred metres I’d hear the rustle of a lizard in the undergrowth – and I’d see adders,” he says.

But over the past decade, the Surrey Wildlife Trust’s director of reserves management, who oversees the internationally important habitat, has seen that wildlife become depleted.

“There was a period, eight or nine years ago, when I’d get home and think: ‘God, I didn’t see or hear any evidence of reptiles.’”