BORIS JOHNSON: Yeah, the pro-newt laws holding back my pool sound bar-ish. But we must protect these amphibians – even if I have to build little salamander motels!

You probably missed it, but recently the BBC decided that the latest nationally important development was the possible discovery of salamanders in my garden.

I say potentially because the salamanders hadn’t really been located yet. The point of the story was that the mere suggestion of salamanders — a salamander footprint, salamander excrement, the frondy shadow of a salamander tail on the bottom of a pond — would be enough to make my plan to dig a pool fuses.

In the days that followed, our national broadcaster mysteriously dropped the story. Other events seem to have dominated their schedules – the Ashes final, interest rates, the Trump trial – and so on.

I imagine there will be many millions of people left in suspense. What happened to the Johnson salamanders, they ask. Is the pool going on?

Well, folks, I’m here to satisfy your impatience. I’m here on the frontline of the great wanted newt, and I can tell you exclusively that the hunt continues.

I once went on a tiger safari in India and the guides were great at their detective work. They would see a strange mark on the bark of a tree and they would say, ‘Look! Here! Tiger pug brand. Tiger was here.’

Or they would point to some crooked grass and say, “Look, the tiger crouched here.”

It went on like this throughout the day, and although we saw neither skin nor hair of a living, breathing tiger, their story was so compelling – and their enthusiasm so contagious – that it almost seemed as if we had. So it is with the salamanders in our garden.

According to one of the ecology reports I’ve received so far (amazingly expensive but worth every penny), there are certainly bodies of water nearby that could be hospitable to salamanders. And there is a chance that these creatures will be interrupted in their wanderings, when they leave their watery burrows, by an unexpected new hole in the lawn.

There’s a risk of them falling into the pool, I think, and discovering that chlorinated water is far from ideal for salamanders. There is only one question left to be solved: do they really exist?

I’ve been told something has been found that could be the salamander’s trail, but we’re awaiting DNA testing from the lab – and so I’m inevitably warned that there could be delays and costs.

Of course I am aware that there are many, many others who are in my position – perhaps readers of this great article. How many times have the bulldozers stopped because someone has found an endangered snail, or because the ecologists have said that bats like to nest in the eaves?

I know there are some who have gone potty with impatience and are furious at the expense.

There may be some who think that the whole world has gone mad and that we are led by a coalition between those notorious newt enthusiasts Gussie Fink-Nottle* and Ken Livingstone. There may be those who would like to tear up all those pro-salamander regulations and put the last few breeding salamanders on the barbecue with their chipolatas.

My friends, I am not one of them. In fact, I’m completely in the opposite camp. If it turns out that our garden is so revered and so fortunate to be home to some salamanders – big 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 on their poolside forays, we will. If we have to make whole salamander-friendly bunds* to keep them from falling in, we will.

We dig out new ponds for them to breed in. We’re going to make a Newtopia!

I will even go so far as to say this: that if necessary – to protect the salamanders – I will dedicate the whole pool to these beautiful survivors of nature’s vast defeated armies – these salamanders of the genus Pleurodelinae – and as far as I dig a pool, it will be a newt pool and not a human pool. And why?

Why am I so extreme? Look what we’ve done in this country with all kinds of amphibians. Britain has a famously temperate environment. We are blessed with streams and streams and ponds. We have marshy* meadows and wonderful marshes and there are nice waters everywhere. It rained for most of July, while most of Europe was either dry or ablaze.

This should be the perfect place to be a frog. It should be a paradise for toads. It should be heaven for salamanders – and yet we humans have turned it into something approaching hell.

It is an astonishing fact that we have fewer amphibian and reptile species than any other country in Europe. We only have 15 – while in France, where there is 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 amphibian and reptile species. As for the few species we have left in this country, they are declining in numbers.

The population of the common toad in the UK has declined by 70 per cent in the last 30 years. The natterjack toad population has declined by 75 percent. We’ve lost 95 percent of our vipers — and every species of salamander is in danger.

Yes, these new rules sound barmy; and yes, we can all feel terribly foolish when we dig a special salamander pool and discover 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 era or early 20th century, you have an impression of such abundance – of every pond and hedge teeming with life.

Today, we Brits in the UK have done more than virtually any other human population to wipe out other members of the animal kingdom and sterilize our landscape.

For heaven’s sake they have more species of amphibians in Eritrea. In Ethiopia they have more.

This is home to so many great naturalists, from Charles Darwin to David Attenborough – and yet we are in the bottom 10 percent of the world in terms of biodiversity.

It is certainly true that the pro-newt laws can be applied more sensibly and flexibly, and thanks to the Environment Act 2021 (and Brexit), we now have the scope to do that.

But we must protect these animals, otherwise posterity will not forgive us.

I don’t care what they say, I’m not staying in a world without toads, and if I’m lucky enough to somehow share my yard or even my pool with salamanders, I’ll consider myself even more blessed than I already am.

Literary who’s who:

August ‘Gussie’ Fink-Nottle – ‘a teetotaler with a face like a fish’ – is an acclaimed newt enthusiast and lifelong friend of Bertie Wooster in the PG Wodehouse novels.

Dictionary Corner:

bund: An embankment or causeway

Sloshing: Wet or soggy