10,000 rare newts feared dead after failed pounds 2m rescue

THE WORLD'S largest colony of great crested newts may be doomed to destruction. More than 10,000 of the creatures, dubbed "Britain's equivalent of the Indian tiger" by Ken Living-stone, are thought to have perished at the hands of housing developers in Peterborough after a failed attempt to re-locate them.

The newts were evicted from their ponds in old brick pits to accommodate a 5,200-home development to the south of Peterborough. In a pounds 2m scheme, they were collected in buckets and taken a few hundred yards to a newly created 276-acre nature reserve featuring 400 ponds.

But initial surveys showed most failed to survive the journey, and despite repeated demands, the developers have failed to provide data to show that the newts have successfully made the transition.

"We don't know what has happened since," said Carol Hatton of the World Wide Fund for Nature. "We need the data because even if these newts don't survive, we can learn lessons for similar cases elsewhere."

Tony Gent, director of the Herpetological Conservation Trust, agrees. "The process has not been as open as it could be," he said. "We've yet to see a definitive report on the project, and that is inexcusable."

But the project is a difficult one for environmentalists to balance because fish, the newts' main predator, had entered the ponds in the brick pits, threatening to wipe out the existing colony.

English Nature, while preferring to leave animals in their existing habitat where possible, has supported moving the newts. "We have to find the best solution that we can. The new site is actively managed and the work has been done in exemplary fashion," said Ian Smith, an English Nature regional manager.

The developer, Peterborough Southern Township, maintains that the project has been a model transformation of a brownfield site. "This is a nature reserve with newts, hares, deer and partridge," said Roger Tallowin, the company's director.

The newts, which are six inches long and have black-backed, dark-spotted yellow or orange bellies, have supporters in high places. Mr Livingstone, with the Prince of Wales, the most high-profile champion of the amphibian, has criticised the attempt to move them, warning that most newts would be guided by a homing instinct back to the original site, dying on the way. The developers have built a wall to stop that happening. The newts' plight became apparent when planning permission to build the new residential area on the Orton brick pits south of Peterborough was granted in the early 1990s. Soon afterwards, environmentalists found that the pits were home to 30,000 great crested newts, so called because of the crest which the males develop on their backs in spring.

Their habitat was declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest, giving it a degree of protection, though not enough to reverse the development.

Five out of the UK's six surviving amphibians depend on ponds yet in parts of the country, 99 per cent of ponds, which used to provide water for livestock, have been replaced with stand-pipes and troughs.