News on Surrey's Greener Future

The purpose of this project was to bring awareness of the importance of Great Crested Newts and their habitat. We set out to confirm if they were still present at the site and then estimate their population numbers.

Great Crested Newts are protected species in the UK and due to this the Stones Road pond site where they were found is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). SSSIs are areas designated in the UK that are of importance due to the species that inhabit them, habitat type, land characterises, etc.

What happened during the survey

Great Crested Newt are a legally protected species in the UK, Surrey County Council recently conducted a series of population surveys to confirm their presence and estimate the population size, using the following methods, bottle trapping, egg searching and torching.

Over six seperate sessions, a total of 50 bottle traps were deployed early evening (30 mins prior to sunset) within the waterbody. Afterwards, a torch light survey (30 mins after sunset) took place. The traps were left overnight and checked the following morning between the hours of 8am and 10am. We were delighted to learn that Great Crested Newt are still present in this site in Epsom.