RAUK - Archived Forum - South Wales Palmate newts

Not really sure if this is the right area to post this up but just wanted to share a small success story.  Back during April 07 a project that the charity I work for were involved in needed some attention.  A small wildlife garden in a junior school was vandalised by a local disgruntled youth.  Most of the damage was easily remedied but the pond had been sabotaged to the point where the water level was dangerously low.  April was far from the ideal time of year to be disturbing the pond but we had little other choice than to do so.

In short, we dug a temporary "bath sized" holding pond, and transferred as much of the mature plant life (comprising of buckets full of hornwort and a substantial amount of mature marginals) from the rapidly draining original pond across to it as possible.  We also painstakingly transferred as much of the animal life as possible which included over 200 palmate newts and copious amounts of invertebrates (which were predominately living in the root sytems of the marginal plants that we transferred) and one lone common frog.  10 days later a completely refurbished pond had the entire contents of the temporary holding pond , including water, transferred across to it.  The mature plant life gave the "new" pond far more of an instantly established feel to it than I had imagined would be possible.  Regular visits afterwards always showed numerous palmate newts present.  Throughout the rest of the Spring and early Summer it was no problem to count several individuals rising for gulps of air in a five minute period.

So all in all a mini victory for the amphibians as it could have been disasterous.

I have some pictures of the pond taken a fortnight after the emergency overhaul.  The plant life looks like it`s been there for months, and the water is crystal clear.  As soon as I have worked out how to resize the pictures I will post them up.

I finally managed to get to grips with resizing.

These photographs were taken two weeks after the emergency pond refit;

Proof that at least one conservation worker in Britain has the needs & interests of our Amphibians & Reptiles close to his heart!

Well done Peter - you've earnt yourself a pint there for sure!

Paul

Cheers Paul.

I have revisited the site only recently.  The pond looks healthy and I spotted a few newts rising.