A scheme for two hundred homes on the edge of Nether Fossey has been delayed by eighteen months after the association's Head of Newts, Dr Barnaby Slough, identified a great crested newt on the site from a distance of forty metres, in fog, at dusk.
The discovery triggered a full ecological survey, a licensing process, the installation of 1.2 kilometres of newt fencing, and a public meeting at which Dr Slough spoke for fifty minutes about "the newt's journey". The developer's own ecologists spent four months on site and found no newts, which Dr Slough described as "exactly what you'd expect from a newt".
Is that a newt? That's a newt. Look at it. It's got the posture.Dr Barnaby Slough, N.O.B., at the site, March 2025
Last week, the specimen, which Dr Slough had kept in a jam jar on his windowsill "for the record", was examined by a schoolchild visiting the village hall, who identified it as a twig within four seconds.
Dr Slough has accepted the finding but not its implications.
A twig today is a newt tomorrow. That is how habitats work. The twig was found in a place a newt might reasonably have been, and that is the precautionary principle. I'd also point out that nobody has proved it isn't a very still newt.Dr Barnaby Slough, N.O.B.
The chapter has now applied for the twig to be added to the local list of heritage assets on the grounds that it "has become part of the story of the village". The developer has declined to comment, but was seen in the pub.
Dr Slough has been retained by three further chapters and is, at the time of writing, on a site in Lincolnshire where he has "a very good feeling about a stone".