An audit of wildlife at the site of the planned Sunday Times Wood has identified at least 45 rare or protected species that could benefit. They include the red kite, a raptor once extinct in England.

The wood, part of an 850-acre project by the Woodland Trust, will be home to rare animals ranging from red kites to long-eared bats, dormice, spotted flycatchers and lesser spotted woodpeckers.

The plantation, to which readers are invited to donate a tree for £15, will be at Sandridge, near St Albans, in Hertfordshire. It will form part of the trust’s planned 600,000 trees from 56 native varieties, which will link three ancient woodlands, allowing the animals already in them to multiply.

The most endangered species on the site include bullfinches, whose numbers have crashed by half in recent years. They are classified red — the highest conservation priority, implying they are globally threatened — by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Red kites, which have been seen at the site, are the rarest of the hawk family. They were extinct in England more than a century ago, victims of egg collectors, taxidermists and gamekeepers, although some survived in mid-Wales. The bird was reintroduced in the early 1990s, and in 2003, 220 breeding pairs were recorded.

Five types of bat, five different amphibians and six categories of butterfly, several of which are regarded as priorities in the government’s biodiversity action plan, have also been found.

“Over the past century the UK’s wildlife habitats have been damaged and destroyed,” said the RSPB. “Only relatively small fragments of high quality habitat remain. It is time to reverse this loss.”

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