Here’s what I was thinking after reading these newspaper articles:
No question that there’s a law and it has to be followed. So Deutsche Bahn has to relocate the lizards. At the same time it’s not surprising that they did public relations in order to complain about the enormous costs and that this would cause some kind of public indignation. So far so well. But what does that generally mean for reptile conservation?
I think this kind of PR is very bad for the acceptance of nature conservation in general and therefore counterproductive. We are talking about protected but not extremely rare animals here. It also shows that, as a land owner in Germany with intention to build something on your ground, you’d better get rid of the reptiles and other protected species as soon as possible before public authorities get wind of their existence. Lucky if your ground is sterile without any living animal on it...
I also don’t dare to think about what else could have been done with that amount of money to protect and promote reptiles and their habitats (albeit I know that the money is bound to the construction project and also used for compensation areas). Is it really wise to invest so much money to relocate allochthonous Podarcis muralis? And assuming that the compensation site is not isolated (I hope so), the native sand lizards would colonise the new site on their own sooner or later anyway.
So in short, I think these very strict regulations are not exactly brilliant (in German: nicht das Gelbe vom Ei) and some sense of proportion for the good of the whole would certainly be better.