Volume Number 2 May 11, 1997

Current News about Newts

A Note from the Publisher

Welcome to Newtsweek! Newtsweek is published on an irregular schedule as a service to other newt enthusiasts. If you have any questions, comments or even articles to contribute, send me some mail.

Enjoy!

Tapaboy Newt Institute (Ayer, MA) September 8, 1996

Tapaboy Newt Institute (Ayer, MA)

The Tapaboy Newt Institute opened the doors and the modem on a Sunday afternoon in November for an open house. Many local Newt enthusiasts stopped by both in person and with the Newt-CAM and the Newt-MUD.

NEWTS Sponsoring Newt Exhibit

Wodehouse Society Sponsors Newt Exhibit in Boston

A new(t) exhibit opened recently at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, funded by members of The Wodehouse Society, (TWS), aficionados of English author P. G. Wodehouse. The new display features red spotted newts, (Notophthalmus viridescens), the only newt species indigenous to New England.

The sponsers of this exhibit is the local chapter of TWS, the New England Wodehouse Thingummy Society, or NEWTS. The NEWTS hosted the 8th International Convention of TWS at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston last October. The Wodehouse Society is a literary association devoted to the study and appreciation of the life and works of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, acknowledged master of the English language and creator of the well-known Bertie Wooster and Jeeves characters recently featured on Masterpiece Theater. Another of Wodehouse's creations, Bertie Wooster's friend Augustus Fink-Nottle, was a devoted newt enthusiast and is the inspiration for this exhibit.

The NEWTS have been responsible for the funding and planning of this exhibit. They have worked closely with Michael Lensch, Asssistant Curator of the Franklin Park Children's Zoo, and Joe Martinez, President of the New England Herpetological Society, (NEHS), to ensure that this display of newts is eye-catching, instructive and in keeping with sound zoological philosophy. The result is a half terrestrial, half aquatic exhibit which features graphics designed to support Mass Audubon's Herp Atlas project. The goal of Herp Atlas is to collect data which will allow Mass Audubon to map the location and population of New England's amphibian and reptile species. They hope to accomplish this daunting task by encouraging the general public to send them photographs of any herps they see, along with date/place information.

[Watch this page for photos and a description of the opening ceremonies Real Soon Now]

From: ELECTRONIC TELEGRAPH (UK) 02 September 1996

From: ELECTRONIC TELEGRAPH (UK) Wednesday June 26 1996

From: THE GUARDIAN ONLINE Guardian Newspapers Ltd (UK) 15 Feb 96

From: THE GUARDIAN ONLINE Guardian Newspapers Ltd (UK) 15 Feb 96

From: ELECTRONIC TELEGRAPH (UK) 20 August 96

From: WARRINGTON GUARDIAN (UK) 10 January 1997

From: RUNCORN NEWS (UK) 10 April 1997

From: WASHINGTON POST 11September 1996

Now people interested in newts can reach out and talk to other newt lovers on the Tapaboy Newt-MUD. A MUD is a Multi User Discussion and allows people to connect and talk in real time to others from around the world. While this is similar to chat rooms on online services like AOL or the the IRC on the internet, the Newt-MUD can be accessed from your web browser.

To get info on the Newt-MUD from here you just click the talking newt!

A GREAT newt hunt is under way around Orton brick pits, near Peterborough, where Hanson Land is intent on completing a new town of 5,200 homes.

Relocating 15,000 newts, half the population in the pits, will cost around 1,000-pounds a newt by the time the cost of sacrificing 300 acres of land for a dedicated newt reserve on the other side of the A15 is taken into account.

Hanson had no idea when it planned the development that the pits contained what is probably Europe's largest single colony of great crested newts - a rare and declining species which is protected under national and EU law. The deal it has struck with English Nature, involving the relocation of half the newts, will enable the company to complete the township without fear of prosecution.

But it is less than certain whether the Government will escape prosecution by the EU, or judicial review in the British courts, for allowing Hanson to destroy the largest part of a 400-acre Site of Special Scientific Interest declared to protect the newt colony.

The World Wide Fund for Nature has already complained to the EU that its strictest nature protection laws are being broken and is now poised to take the Government to court from the moment - expected this autumn - that the Government declares the remaining pits a Euro-reserve.

A rare amphibian - an albino neotenous palmate newt - has been found in a school pond by a 10-year-old girl.

The newt, discovered by Liz Faulkner at Pencalenick School, Truro, has been moved to a tank for safety reasons. "We were a bit worried that a passing gull might pick him off as he's so conspicuous," said the girl's father, Martin Faulkner. The peach-coloured newt is neotenous in that it is fully grown but retains tadpole features, such as its mane of pink gills and tail, said Mark Nicholson, education officer of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

Ken Livingstone reveals the politics behind an unusual eviction order while Fred Pearce assesses the consequences of a grand new home for newts.

In the next few weeks, the great crested newts of south Peterborough will be waking from hibernation to find a new neighbour just beyond their ponds: the foundations of a new Tesco superstore. The store is the first stage of a new town, Hampton, to be built on a large expanse of old brick pits, which in recent years have become home to Europe's largest colony of protected newt.

While the newts have been sleeping, Hanson Trust, owner of the pond-dotted lunar landscape, has unveiled its plans to build 5,000 houses there. Many houses will be built on a designated site of special scientific interest (SSSI), where the newts currently forage and lay their larvae. To make way, ecologists will capture 15,000 great crested newts (half the population) over the next three years, and decant them into newly-dug ponds on the other side of the A15 which runs through the development.

Later this month English Nature, the government conservation agency, will agree to a detailed Hanson plan for the 300-hectare reserve. It will designate foraging, migration and breeding areas for the newts and will set up a programme to remove any fish, since they eat newt larvae.

All mod cons are being provided for the newts, which have become, says Charron Pugsley of English Nature, Britain's equivalent of the US spotted owl, whose discovery can halt million-dollar property developments overnight.

Some environmentalists see English Nature's failure to halt Hanson's development, and its willingness to sacrifice part of a designated SSSI in the process, as a craven dereliction of its duty to a protected species. Carol Hatton, planning officer at the World Wide Fund for Nature says: "It is hard to believe the Government's own conservation watchdog can stand by while the UK's largest colony of an endangered species is destroyed."

Others see it as pragmatic environmental management. "An enlightened approach" that will provide "a secure future for Peterborough's newts," says English Nature's chief executive Derek Langslow. Take your pick, but the question now is whether the newts can be persuaded to move - or will they be crushed in their thousands on the A15 as they flee?

Tom Langton is a newt expert hired by Hanson in 1991 to plan the reserve - probably the most expensive single residence in the new development. Langton's first problem was a census. As a rule of thumb, he says, he walks around the ponds at night with a bright torch, counting everything that moves - and then multiplies that number by 10. He counted 3,000 newts in more than 100 pools across the brick pits, which extend west for several miles from the King's Cross to York railway line. "We reckon we have about 30,000 altogether, but we shall see when we start catching them, " he says.

Catching 15,000 newts will be done with 500 industrial plastic food containers, each about two feet deep, sunk into the ground like miniature elephant traps around the amphibians' foraging grounds. Langton will then drop the animals into their new domain - and fence them in for several years.

"They will try to head for home as fast and hard as they can," says Langton. "Most animals will. The trick is to maintain the fencing and to destroy their old habitat as quickly as possible."

As one of nature's itinerants, great crested newts should, in theory, move easily. Newts once lived in marshes, and, as they were drained, most moved to farm ponds.

"Now the ponds are going too, and we find huge concentrations of newts around bodies of water left by quarrying," says Langton.

The chalk pits of Kent, coal workings of northern England, and brick pits of the Midlands have suddenly turned into great newt metropolises.

But the latest moves, to purpose-built reserves, "have sometimes been expensive disasters," admits Langton. English Nature backed British Coal when it spent more than 500,000 pounds between 1988 and 1993 recording and moving 3,000 great crested newts from ponds around the huge Lomax spoil heap outside Bolton, Lancashire, to newly-dug ponds nearby.

The move was a condition of planning permission to extract over a million tonnes of coal from the heap. The mining never took place, which was lucky for the newts, who tunnelled under the fence round their new ponds and headed for home. "The number in the conservation area is now very low," says Tony Gent of English Nature.

Hanson will outspend British Coal on the Peterborough reserve. "We have a commitment to do the job, whatever the cost and however long it takes," says a spokesman. Hanson will spend the money on research and better fencing around the reserve. The fences will be about a foot high, plastic lined, and erected in duplicate, like a miniature international border.

Langton has rejected as expensive and unnecessary a complex system of computerised identification of individual newts by their belly markings, which are almost as distinctive as human fingerprints. The system flopped at the Lomax site.

He also opposes electronic tagging because "it would be the equivalent of a human being carrying a milk bottle around inside them." In any case, such monitoring would not reveal a lot, he says. "Newts live into their teens and you really need three generations before you know whether relocation has worked."

Such uncertainty is ammunition for environmentalists, especially because it is increasingly clear that the great crested newt is on the run in the UK. An estimated 20,000 British ponds still have small colonies of great crested newts.

But the ponds are disappearing and, says Langton, "there appears to be a critical pond density, of about 1.4 ponds per square kilometre, below which they begin to die out because distances are too great for them to move between ponds."

Last month, the London Amphibian and Reptile group reported that only 37 ponds in London now had breeding great crested newts - 40 per cent down on 1981, the year the Wildlife and Countryside Act theoretically gave the amphibian absolute protection.

But Langton believes it is unfair to apply the same standards of habitat protection to man-made sites and natural habitats. The brick pits were once farmland; the newts arrived in large numbers as the clay-cutting operations of the last 50 years left behind deep furrows within which ponds formed. "In fact, you could look at the mining operation as probably the biggest newt habitat creation experiment of all time," says Langton. If the pits were abandoned and their water pumps switched off, the whole area would flood and the newts would drown.

"We have no choice but to manage the landscape."

Newtwatch - Ken Livingstone

The great crested newt, the largest and rarest of Britain's newts, is a beautiful black-backed, miniature dragon with an orange belly and a jagged crest that runs its full six-inch length. Ironically, the survival of this endangered amphibian is now linked to the survival of John Major: the largest colony ever recorded in Europe has been discovered in the Prime Minister's own constituency of Huntingdon.

You might think Mr Major would want to be photographed protecting the colony. I imagine he would have, too, had it not been for the fact that Lord Hanson, second largest contributor to Conservative party funds, stands to lose 30m pounds if he is not allowed to proceed with plans to build 5,000 new homes on top of the newts' habitat. Moreover, half of the site overlaps into the constituency of Brian Mawhinney, the Conservative party chairman. Dr Mawhinney recently paid a visit to English Nature, but the meeting was private, so we can only speculate on how strongly he lobbied in favour of the great crested newt - and against the financial interests of Lord Hanson. Whatever Dr Mawhinney discussed, a "deal" has now been struck whereby the newts will be moved to a neighbouring site.

But the sad truth is that their homing instinct will guide them back to their original site, where they will be crushed to death in their thousands under Lord Hanson's bulldozers.

One can only speculate as to why English Nature was not prepared to stand up to Lord Hanson. Perhaps Trevor Beebee of the British Herpetological Society was right when he said: "If English Nature digs its heels in on this site, one can imagine the comeback for them if the Tories were re-elected."

What is really surprising is that English Nature took so long to act. In 1990, it was informed of the need to protect the site and, in normal circumstances, the habitat would have been protected three or four years ago. "The main thing is to protect the newts, not the habitat," says Ian Dair of English Nature. But I can imagine what English Nature's council would say if there were ever a proposal to remove golden eagles from their habitat.

Ken Livingstone is Labour MP for Brent East and has been rearing newts since childhood.

A DUCK pond complete with ducks may seem a natural combination, but a parish council has ruled that it must not be.

A pair of ducks called Tom and Jerry are to be evicted from the village pond at Bentley, Hants, after complaints that they could harm great crested newts living in the weeds. The ducks were put on the pond two months ago by Lorraine Yardley and are popular with children.

A heated parish council meeting to decide the fate of Tom and Jerry voted to have them ordered off. Both have clipped wings which mean they cannot fly away. A campaign has now started to allow the ducks to stay on the pond, and a banner proclaiming, "Save Our Ducks" has appeared next to the pond, along with a garden gnome baring his bottom in protest.

"Have you ever heard of a duck pond where they will not allow ducks?" asked Mrs Yardley who put the ducks on the pond when someone brought them to her. The ducks have brightened up the pond, but there is a movement which wants them gone. Ducks have used the pond for years. It is just because Tom and Jerry's wings are clipped that there is this fuss."

The newts are a protected species and Ian Davidson-Watts, a species protection officer for English Nature, said that having birds with clipped wings could destroy their habitat.

"I told the villagers that it could be an offence under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act if the ducks were not removed," he said. "Having certain wildfowl visit the pond could help get rid of some of the weeds, but having clipped birds there permanently could destroy the newts' habitat."

Mrs Yardley has been given until Sept 1 to move the ducks, but she is hoping for a reprieve. "It seems as if they are male and female so there might be some ducklings on the way."

Tony Holmes, chairman of the council who abstained in the vote, said: "The ducks' feathers will grow again and then they will be off. The whole thing is ridiculous."