A Herefordshire wildlife rescue expert who has spent years hand-rearing barn owls says plans linked to a new bypass do not go far enough to protect the county’s animals and habitats. Dr Sasha Norris, who runs Herefordshire Wildlife Rescue from her home with local businesswoman Jacqui Mayne, is preparing to meet Herefordshire Council officials after raising fresh concerns about the scheme.

Norris has seen the damage firsthand. She has found the corpses of barn owls on Herefordshire A-roads and said the project has prompted serious doubts about whether the promised mitigation will be enough. The Barn Owl Trust says between 3,000 and 5,000 of the 12,000 young owls born each year are killed on Britain’s roads, and data cited by the group suggests owls living within 25km of a main road are at risk of death.

The concerns were raised at a recent Back the Bypass event hosted by Herefordshire Council, where the environmental and wildlife impact of the plan was discussed. Councillor Elissa Swinglehurst said the first phase of the project would bring an extra 3km of hedgerow and species-rich new woodland, and the meeting was told that 13 acres of woodland would be planted, though that planting is tied to the loss of two acres of ancient woodland at Grafton.

Norris said the measures are “nowhere near adequate” and argued that a county as wildlife-rich as Herefordshire should be held to a higher bar than national standards. She said developers can plant large numbers of trees on new estates, but those trees are not always the right species or old enough to become a healthy habitat. A thousand planted trees, she said, may never become home for bats, woodpeckers or an owl.

Her criticism goes beyond one road scheme. Norris said her work is about speaking for animals that cannot do that themselves and judging what they actually need rather than what looks good on paper. She also questioned whether bypasses really solve traffic problems, saying that when bypasses are built, more traffic can quickly follow. For now, the row over the Herefordshire plan is headed back to the council table, where Norris plans to press for stronger protection and a better accounting of what the county could lose.