UK: One Million Pounds Spent To Protect An Endangered Newt – That Wasn’t There

So….somebody wanted to build a road. Somebody else cried, “Wait! There are endangered crested newts there. We must protect them!”
So they did a study to the tune of a million pounds to find and protect the little critters – roughly two million dollars – and found out, lo and behold, there were no newts to be found anyhwere on the construction site:

Leicestershire County Council delayed a major road-building scheme for three months after evidence of great crested newts was found on the site. The species is protected by law, but after the authority paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for special newt-fencing and traps, not one of the rare creatures was discovered.
The action was taken on the strength of a report from environmental experts, which found there could have been between one and 10 of the 6in amphibians on the site.
Officials yesterday lodged a complaint with the government, claiming the outlay would have a knock-on effect on local services.

Too bad they weren’t polar bears. They wouldn’t have had to look so hard to find some of those. Heh.
Thanks to Barking Moonbat for this one.