BORIS JOHNSON: Yes, the pro-newt laws holding up my swimming pool sound barmy. But protect these amphibians we must – even if I have to build little newt motels!
You probably missed it but the other day the BBC decided that the latest nationally important development was the potential discovery of newts in my garden.
I say potential, because the newts had not yet actually been located. The point of the story was that the mere suggestion of newts — a newt footprint, newt droppings, the frondy shadow of a newt tail at the bottom of a pond — was going to be enough to stop my plan to dig a swimming pool.
In the days that have followed, our national broadcaster has mysteriously dropped the story. Other events seem to have dominated their schedules — the Ashes finale, interest rates, the Trump trial — and so on.
I can imagine that there will be many millions of people who have been left on tenterhooks. What’s happened with the Johnson newts, they are asking. Is the swimming pool going ahead?
Well, folks, I am here to satisfy your impatience. I am here on the front line of the great quested newt, and I can tell you exclusively that the hunt goes on.
I once went on a tiger safari in India, and the guides were magnificent in their sleuthing. They would see a strange mark on the bark of a tree and they would say: ‘See! Here! Tiger pug mark. Tiger was here.’
Or they would point to some bent grasses and say: ‘Look, this is where tiger has crouched.’
I am here on the front line of the great quested newt – and I can tell you exclusively that the hunt goes on, writes BORIS JOHNSON
So it went on all day, and though we saw neither hide nor hair of a living, breathing tiger, their narrative was so compelling — and their enthusiasm so infectious — that it was almost as if we had. So it is with the newts in our garden.
According to one of the ecology reports I have so far received (amazingly expensive but worth every penny), there are certainly bodies of water nearby that could be hospitable to newts. And there is a chance that these creatures could be interrupted in their peregrinations, when they leave their watery lairs, by an unexpected new hole in the lawn.
There is a risk that they could fall in the pool, I suppose, and find that chlorinated water is very far from ideal for newts. There is only one question remaining to be resolved: do they actually exist?
I am told that something that could be the spoor of the newt has been found, but we await DNA testing from the lab — and so, inevitably, I am warned that there may be delays, and there may be costs.
Of course, I am aware that there are many, many others who have found themselves in my position — perhaps readers of this great paper. How many times have the bulldozers been halted because someone has found an endangered snail, or because the ecologists have said that bats may like to nest in the eaves?
I know there are some who have been driven potty with impatience, and furious at the expense.
There may be people who think the whole world has gone newt crazy, and that we are being run by a coalition between those notorious newt-fanciers Gussie Fink-Nottle* and Ken Livingstone. There may be people who would happily tear up all this pro-newt regulation and put the last pair of breeding newts on the barbecue with their chipolatas.
There may be people who think the whole world has gone newt crazy, and that we are being run by a coalition of notorious newt-fanciers Ken Livingstone and Gussie Fink-Nottle – the lifelong friend of Bertie Wooster in the P. G. Wodehouse novels (pictured in the ITV adaptation)
My friends, I am not among them. In fact, I am in entirely the opposite camp. If it turns out that our garden is so honoured and so fortunate as to be the home of some newts — great crested, palmate, whatever — I want you to know that I will do whatever it takes to protect them.
If we have to build little newt motels to house them in their trips past the swimming pool, then we will. If we have to create whole newt-friendly bunds* to stop them falling in, we will.
We will excavate new ponds in which they can breed. We will make a Newtopia!
In fact, I will go so far as to say this: that if necessary — to protect the newts — I will consecrate the entire swimming pool to these wonderful survivors of the vast defeated armies of Nature — these salamanders of the genus Pleurodelinae — and insofar as I dig a pool, it will be a newt pool and not a pool for human beings. And why?
Why am I so extreme? Look at what we have done, in this country, to amphibians of all kinds. Britain has a famously temperate environment. We are blessed with brooks and streams and ponds. We have plashy* meadows and delightful bogs and everywhere there are pleasant little bodies of water. It was raining for the greater part of July, while most of the rest of Europe has been either parched or ablaze.
This should be the perfect place to be a frog. It should be paradise for toads. It should be heaven for newts — and yet we human beings have turned it into something approaching hell.
It is a stunning fact that we have fewer species of amphibian and reptile than any other country in Europe. We have only 15 — while in France, where there is admittedly an abundance of frogs — they have 42. Italy has 49, Spain 38, Greece 26, Germany 22 and so on.
Even the Netherlands, which has a higher population density than the UK, has more species of amphibians and reptiles. As for the few species we still have in this country, they are plummeting in numbers.
If it turns out that our garden is so honoured and so fortunate as to be the home of some newts — great crested, palmate, whatever — I want you to know that I will do whatever it takes to protect them
The population of the common toad, in the UK, has declined by 70 per cent in the past 30 years. The population of the natterjack toad is down by 75 per cent. We have lost 95 per cent of our adders — and every kind of newt is in danger.
Yes, these newt rules sound barmy; and yes, we may all feel terribly foolish when we dig a special newt pool and find that they never actually use it.
But what kind of Britain do we want to leave to our children? If you read the accounts of the British countryside in the literature of the Victorian age or the early 20th century, you have an impression of such abundance — of every pond and hedgerow teeming with life.
Today, in the UK, we British have done more than virtually any other human population to exterminate other members of the animal kingdom and sterilise our landscape.
They have more species of amphibian in Eritrea, for heaven’s sake. They have more in Ethiopia.
This is the home of so many great naturalists, from Charles Darwin to David Attenborough — and yet for biodiversity we rank in the bottom 10 per cent in the world.
It is certainly the case that the pro-newt laws could be applied more sensibly and flexibly, and thanks to the 2021 Environment Act (and Brexit) we now have the scope to do that.
But protect these animals we must, or posterity will not forgive us.
I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay in a world without toads, and if I am lucky enough somehow to share my garden or even my swimming pool with newts, then I will count myself even more blessed than I already am.
Literary who’s who:
Augustus ‘Gussie’ Fink-Nottle — ‘a teetotal bachelor with a face like a fish’ — is an acclaimed newt-fancier and lifelong friend of Bertie Wooster in the P. G. Wodehouse novels.
Dictionary corner:
Bund: An embankment or causeway
Plashy: Wet or marshy
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