A bridge costing 190,000 pounds has been made in Britain to help dormice cross a busy road, a media report said Wednesday.
The Welsh assembly funded three high-wire walkways across a busy new road in the Rhondda Valley in Wales. The bypass runs through two important mice habitats,
However, the construction was Tuesday slammed as a waste of taxpayers' money.
"Many taxpayers will think the Welsh assembly are taking the mickey. In these straitened times they should've explored less expensive ways of protecting these creatures," Fiona McEvoy, from the TaxPayers' Alliance, said.
A local resident from Llantrisant said: "I find it absurd that they have spent such an obscene amount." "It's an eyesore and it's ludicrous. It's crazy," another resident said.
Dormice, an endangered species, like to move around in trees.
What a waste of money.
Those mooching mice. It's not like they pay any tax.
I saw the pictures of this in the paper.
It's more a question of how did two poles and a bit of wire cost £190 000 than is it worth spending money to keep dormice from becoming extinct in this area.
A trebuchet would have been more fun...
The authorities will spend cash on all sorts of daft stuff. Wales is littered with hills, mountains and forests and they go and build a load of bike trails in the woods just a stones throw from some of the worst towns in the UK so lazy bikers can have their bikes nicked in car parks. It's a scandal I tell you!
They have access to a lot of money in Llantrisant.
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seems like a drop in the ocean compared to building the road in the first place or having it just go round the site
Seriously though, £190 000 for that ^.
Go Ape could have knocked something up for a couple of hundred and recouped the money by letting kids climb across it during the day while the mice are asleep.
'assembly are taking the [i]mickey[/i]'
love it.
seems like a drop in the ocean compared to building the road in the first place or having it just go round the site
Not doing it at all is an even smaller drop in the ocean.
not doing it would be illegal.
I expect the £190 000 was mostly spent on consultants deciding if they thought it would work or not.....
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We got a new bridge, **** you project...
Why didnt they just put a pipe under the road or are mice afraid of the dark, now we have a problem thaat some door mice might not like heights, and put in a claim for discrimination.
Is there a door mice union. 😆
Crikey the picture look slike a burger with abnout the right amount of meat in it you actually can see.
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Got bitches coming over [u]my[/u] bridge, project, what you got?
I assume part of the budget was used to make lots of little signs telling the mice there's a new bridge?
and the gaps between the mesh tunnels look like quite large gap jumps for the little chaps
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Tired from bridge walking, shut you mouth project chile..
At £6 an hour working a typical 4 hour day and doing a 7 day week you could employ a lollipop person for over 21 years for that sort of money. Cheaper still a zebra crossing with very narrow stripes.
yes dormice dont like the dark, the bridge has to have plants growing in it too.
If they'd dick strawbridge on it they could have knocked something much more cost effective - compressed air dormice cannon and catch nets anyone?
I assume part of the budget was used to make lots of little signs telling the mice there's a new bridge?
And as it's in Wales they will be bilingual
That's got to be the weirdest spoonerism I have ever seen.
£50k was spent taking down the signs that said "i am out of the office on holiday" rather than dormice these steps to heaven please"
aahhh they are sweet tho.
So are there signs to let the dormice know to use the bridge and not just leg it across the road? It's a lot of effort to climb up that. Can other rodents use it?
Great postings from crikey 🙂
Three bridges and 60 boxes apparently, so about £63k per bridge. It's 0.2% the cost of the total £90m bypass project or a couple of weeks wages for a prem footballer.
BTW - it's about £10m per km for the new road...
Cheaper still a zebra crossing with very narrow stripes.
Tears in my eyes from that one - thanks for a proper LOL!!
£190k on a mouse bridge trumps our local stupidity.
A road bridge was replaced over a river, the bridge crosses the river over a weir, somehow it was decided that the weir needed to be rebuilt to allow little trout to pass upstream, something they've managed for years with the weir as was..
Nett result £25k plus spent on a channel up the middle of the new weir as a 'fish run', the base of which is lined with special concrete, imprinted with a pattern to help the little fishies can get traction to climb their new motorway... no, i'm not joking.. a sign beside the dam gives you the details 🙄
oh and, when they get up there, it's a 100mtr stretch of river, then they can go no further, due to an all but vertical 6ft weir...
Its the thought that counts. Fish access improved - tick.
oh and, when they get up there, it's a 100mtr stretch of river, then they can go no further
I've seen a few cycle lanes like that....
A lot of projects/accessing funds seem to be about the process, creating work for people, and not entirely about the end result. leaving a lasting legacy doesn't seem to be high on the agenda these days either.
By the time you've got your cut of the dough there is nothing left to do what you wanted in the first place. or it just ends up crap.
£190k doesn't even buy half a cruise missile. I would rather see the money being spent protecting our natural environment, than bombing the crap out of someone else's country.
And I doubt whether that amount differs vastly from installing a dozen new road signs........[i]bilingual[/i] welsh/english road signs
£190k.
It won't be a £190k bridge. I'd bet that figure is actually the cost of environmental consultancy fees for the entire project. Which as it's a bypass, seems pretty reasonable.
CaptJon puts it into perspective a bit, is it £10M/Km for most roads or is that a special case?
Cbike, sounds right, I've a nasty suspicion that councils, gov departments etc get funding for particular projects so they make damn sure the moneys spent rather than making real world improvments. so you get stuff like half arsed fish access and bike lanes to nowhere (or as here in manchester lots of green paint but it's not actually any safer for cyclists).
Have we spent up the annual budget?
Yes, we've not done anything useful with it but it's spent.
Job done then.
I'd bet that figure is actually the cost of environmental consultancy fees for the entire project.
indeed, thats what I said
Ok you got me
Yep I fell for that one.
A 190k bridge for a mouse, good one you had me there....
What it's 26th sept not April 1st.
Absolute bollox
I presume people who are justifying it on here are just doing so for the hell of it.
Which ever idiots signed this off should be sacked.
Dormice, an endangered species, like to move around in trees.
Yes but I bet the adrenaline junkies amongst them just run across the road !
If those mice are anything like teenagers with underpasses, they'll be too lazy not to just take their chances across the main rd
{fish} when they get up there, it's a 100mtr stretch of river, then they can go no further, due to an all but vertical 6ft weir...
Perhaps that stretch of river is the spawning ground? In which case fish will attempt to return to it every year.
Having said that, a 6ft weir should be passable to salmon and trout. I've seen the leap and climb much higher falls than that.
One of the benefits of being in the EU as the bureaucrats made the rule that small cute rodents need protecting and then UK bureaucrats gold plate the EU policy.
One area of waste that is any easy saving adopt the French attitude and ignore stupid EU policy
Nobody bothered its £90m for an 8km stretch of road?
Some morons on here to be fair, just because the endangered species isnt a cute fluffy panda its not worth protecting?
TBH I'm really surprised at people's attitude to conservation on a mountain biking forum.
It's a european protected species, the highest level of protection afforded to animals in the UK. Carry on the way people on here talk, and we'd end up with extinctions on our hands.
They're just outside my house - surprised they didn't cost more TBH
Ohh, and see that £10M / km road build figure - that would allow you to calculate the cost of re-routing the road around the dormice habitat rather than going through it...
You would have needed at least another 1000m even for a minor route revision. Go north and close to resi (compensation / cumpulsory purchase) Go south and you're higher ground / steeper gradients / more rock excavation / cutting. Other alternative is south of iron age hill fort, must be several km further, otter habitat, prob still dormice.....
cheaper than trident, and i bet(hope) it'll get used a hell of a lot more, will work properly, wont go on costing the earth (literally) and actually has a purpose?
tron - Member
TBH I'm really surprised at people's attitude to conservation on a mountain biking forum.
I've always got the impression that most people on here treat the outdoors as a bit of an inconvenience, hence the liking for trail centres.
But does this bridge actually and more importantly significantly protect/help the mouse population?
Is there good evidence that this will work or is it just a expensive follie.
To offset the teeth gnashing in this thread:
[url= http://fullfact.org/articles/disability_benefit_how_much_does_fraud_and_error_cost ]Disability Benefit Underpayments Outweight Fraud and Overpayments[/url]
Nobody bothered its £90m for an 8km stretch of road?
Course not - I've got a fast RWD car to drive. Obviously it needs new roads to be driven on.
Is there good evidence that this will work or is it just a expensive follie.
Huh - no-one's thought about that one before.
(You know the environmental impact assessment is a matter of public record, right?)
Ro5ey - Member
But does this bridge actually and more importantly significantly protect/help the mouse population?Is there good evidence that this will work or is it just a expensive follie.
So are you trying to suggest that the bridge was built in an area where there are no dormice? Or that dormice won't use it? I'd [i]hope[/i] that the people who built it have more knowledge than the [i]experts[/i] on here.
An expensive folly? It's not exactly a penguin feeding point in Westminster is it? And why don't you put the cost into perspective - you can buy a Ferrari and have some change. That's for 3 bridges to protect an endangered species.
But again, maybe [i]you'd[/i] be happy for dormice to die out completely, and then we can move onto planning the extinction of another British animal.
Is there good evidence that this will work or is it just a expensive follie.
Of course not. Environmental consultancy firms are mostly staffed by GCSE drop outs with a pack of crayolas. Their fees are actually performance based - the more articles in the Daily Mail and quotes from the Taxpayer's Alliance, the more they get paid.
Mitigation is based on solid scientific evidence and professional judgement. The science answers the question of "Does X mitigation technique work?" and the professional judgement comes in when you actually select the amount and type of mitigation required.
The level of qualification required to do this sort of work is pretty high. MScs are very common, and PhDs aren't unusual. They don't go in for guesswork, as a) they give a monkeys and b) they can be sued if they cock up.
The bloke at doormousebridges.com must have thought all his Christmases had come at once!! 😆
The bloke at doormousebridges.com must have thought all his Christmases had come at once!!
excellent 😀
Everyone is keen on conservation and protecting endangered species, until they realise that it might actually cost money!
then we can move onto planning the extinction of another British animal.
Daily Mail readers perhaps?
Sadly last night a poor little doormouse from a newly seperated mother,decided he would try to see his biological father, on approaching the new road, and not haveing been to mouse school,he failed to either read or note the new bilingual mouse crossing signs, he decided to cross the new road at road level.
Thankfully an environmentally conscious moutainbiker saw baby mouse, trying to cross the road, stopped got his large lunch box out and carefully lifted Baby mouse into the new home his lunch box.
He carried the lunchbox carefuly across the road and opened the box, the little mouse looked up and tweeped a thankyou,the mountainbikers face lit up at the thought of helping a poor little animal,as the little mouse ran off, he was chased by the local scally cat, and eaten, scally cat then meowed a thankyou for the warm takeaway.
The moral of this story is if you dont educate the baby mice, and keep cuting back on the education budget,then all youll get is fat cats.
project - Membernot haveing been to mouse school.......conscious moutainbiker saw baby mouse.....carefully lifted Baby mouse ......the little mouse looked up......the little mouse ran off
The moral of this story is if you dont educate the baby mice, and keep cuting back on the education budget,then all youll get is fat cats.
A dormouse isn't a mouse ...... any more than a pineapple is an apple.
So if there's a moral to this story, then it's educate yourself on the subject - before you post a thread about it 💡
a mouse and a dormouse are rodents, and both share the name mouse.
And, a pineapple and an apple are fruits, and both share the name apple.
Do you always say apple when you mean pineapple ?
Leave it, ernie.. leave it - it's not worth it...
🙁
It's ok.. there's other fish in the pedantic sea 🙂
konabunny - Memberthen we can move onto planning the extinction of another British animal.
Daily Mail readers perhaps?
Brain dead already surely?