James Delingpole James Delingpole

Delingpole: Here’s what I learnt from the extinction of the golden toad — ecologists have sold out to the religion of global warming

Why did the Costa Rican amphibian disappear? You'll find a lot of waffle in highly-respective science journals attributing this to 'climate change'

Forget climate change, the African clawed frog is responsible for the extinction of the golden toad. Credit: Getty Images | Shutterstock | iStock | Alamy 
issue 07 December 2013

When I was a child — in the days before it became illegal under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) and Schedule 2 of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations (2010) — I was an unlicensed handler of great crested newts.

I loved them for the same reasons, I imagine, Ken Livingstone does: the gorgeous contrast between their rough, matt black bodies and their flame-orange and black-speckled bellies; the way they float in mid-pond as if in suspended animation; watching them develop from their larval stage into efts and then adults; Beatrix Potter’s Sir Isaac Newton…

But this...

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