Newts on the crest of multi-million-pound new home

Hanson new town carries a hidden cost, reports Nicholas Schoon

A pounds 3m operation to move 15,000 great crested newts out of the way of one of the biggest development projects in Europe is under way in a Cambridgeshire brick-field.

Every day this summer, in a vast clay pit next to the perpetually smoking brickworks at Orton, dozens of the small amphibians fall into pitfall traps. They are then moved a short distance to a site which will escape the bulldozers clearing the land for a pounds 500m private-sector new town on the edge of Peterborough.

The land's owner, Hanson, is spending millions on the newts' rescue because it is anxious to remain within the law. The great crested newt is rare, in decline and protected by an Act of Parliament. And Hanson had the misfortune of finding what is probably Europe's single biggest colony of the newt inhabiting its development site.

As well as the rescue work, the multinational company has had to sacrifice adjacent land, worth potentially more than pounds 10m, to a dedicated 300- acre newt reserve. That brings the price tag for each creature saved up to pounds 1,000.

The costly protection measures have been negotiated with English Nature, the Government's wildlife conservation watchdog. But the World Wide Fund for Nature regards the agreement as a scandal and is looking to prosecute the Government for allowing development on the newt-inhabited land to go ahead.

The conservation group has already complained to the European Commission, allegingthat European Union nature protection laws are being breached. It wants Hanson tofind somewhere else to build the one-fifth of its township destined for the newts' habitat, or to shrink the development.

Out of the question, says James Hopkins, Hanson's managing director for the project. "You can't just suddenly plonk 1,100 homes somewhere else. We will have to rethink the whole master plan."

The clay pits still supply the Hanson-owned brick-making industry in Peterborough. Some have already been filled with coal ash from power stations. Those that remain are being drained and engineered to make them a secure foundation for the 5,200 homes, plus schools, shops, leisure centre and offices, which will make up the township.

Last week the newts were being removed by Hanson's wild life consultants from where a large embankment will be built to define the edge of the reserve. A foot-high fence of slippery material is placed along the boundary of the trapping area. When a newt encounters this it climbs over, falls, and then crawls along the bottom of the fence until it drops into one of numerous plastic bowls.

The old pits may look blighted and ripe for reuse, but they are a rich wildlife refuge amid the intensively farmed surrounding fenland. Waterfowl, birds of prey, rare dragonflies and hares, along with the newts also thrive in boggy landscape among the thousands of conical, 20-ft hillocks made of clay and soil left over after the prime brick-making material was extracted.

Between the hillocks are the pools where the newts breed. No one appreciated how high their numbers were - around 30,000 - until development plans were well under way. Then English Nature declared the 400-acre area a site of special scientific interest. This was awkward, since SSSIs are designated to protect nature from damage and development.

But along with the designation came English Nature's deal with Hanson. In compensation for destroying the bulk of the SSSI, the company would create a permanent reserve for the amphibians.

This, say the two organisations, is a great gain for conservation, because the newts would be doomed if they were left alone. As time passes, the pits fill with water and small fish start to colonise the pools. These then eat the newts' eggs. If the area were abandoned to nature, then within 100 years the huge newt population would almost vanish.