Boris Johnson promises to 'cohabit' with protected newts after they threatened pool plans

Boris Johnson has promised to do whatever it takes to protect any newts discovered in the garden of his country house, and says he would not want to live in a world without amphibians.

This comes after plans for a proposed swimming pool at the former Prime Minister's Oxfordshire estate were hampered by the very newts he once criticised for slowing down the UK's house-building aspirations.

Johnson had lodged a planning application with the South Oxfordshire District Council to build an 11-metre swimming pool at his country manor - but the council's countryside officer lodged an objection, saying that his pool could put the local newt population at risk.

The former PM, who now lives at Grade II-listed Brightwell Manor with wife Carrie and their three young children, told the Daily Mail: "I want you to know that if there are newts here, no-one could be more delighted than me to cohabit with those threatened amphibians.

"And I believe that it is our job to protect them and do everything we can to make sure they do not suffer the continual decline in population that we have seen over the last 30 years."

Johnson said in a new column on Friday that the presence of the threatened amphibians was yet to be confirmed, despite an ecology report - "amazingly expensive but worth every penny" - but that he would be honoured if his garden was in fact home to newts of any kind.

"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," he added.

Britain's famously temperate climate should be the perfect place to be a frog or a toad, he said, but "we human beings have turned it into something approaching hell".

"We British have done more than virtually any other human population to exterminate other members of the animal ­kingdom and sterilise our landscape," Johnson continued, lamenting the loss of the UK's amphibians, and asking, "what kind of Britain do we want to leave to our children?"

While he believed "pro-newt laws" could be applied more sensibly, he said: "I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay in a world without toads".

Johnson famously took aim at newts in 2020, saying delays to construction caused by newt conservation surveys were "a massive drag on the prosperity of this country,” according to the Guardian.

Great-crested newts - the species which might be present on Johnson's estate - are protected under the UK's Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, the key piece of legislation responsible for making sure people do not interfere with endemic plants, animals, and wildlife habitats.

But they are not the only ones, with hundreds of species - from butterflies to basking sharks - listed in the act.