RARE amphibians which have made their home on a Darlington estate have been counted by an ecologist.

Some great crested newt families, a protected species, have spawned in a pond where houses once stood on the Firthmoor estate.

Last week, ecologist Tony Martin, who holds a special licence for handling the newts, conducted a count on the site, which will be presented to English Nature.

The presence of the six-inch long newts is the first step towards the area behind Firthmoor becoming a nature reserve.

Countryside officers at Darlington Borough Council are working with the Firthmoor Partnership and other community groups to create a nature reserve and park area, with ponds stocked for fishing, as part of the estate's regeneration.

The newt count is just part of the process of getting funding for the project. About six newts were discovered during the count, which was minimal sample of the population in the area.

Council countryside officer Rob George said: "We are trying to move the whole site towards being a local nature reserve. The development is aimed towards establishing a facility where fishing and wildlife can live in harmony. The same ponds cannot be used for both purposes, so we are building several ponds, some exclusively for fishing and others for wildlife."