NATURE-LOVING Colchester residents are shocked after police threatened to take away and destroy frogs living in their ponds.

Police officers could be frog-marching the noisy creatures away after a neighbour claimed they were being disturbed late at night during the mating season.

Mile End Road resident Dominic Payne said he first heard about complaints when an environmental health officer from Colchester Council knocked on his door late one evening.

She told him officers had spent the previous evening listening to the frogs, measuring their noise decibel levels. He said: “I thought that was the end of it, but a week later two police officers turned up and said ‘we’ve come to investigate the frogs’.

“They went all round my garden trying to photograph the frogs. They were here for about an hour and a half.”

Then, last week, next-door neighbour James Kent returned from holiday to find a letter from the police’s Wildlife Crime Unit saying the marsh frogs were a “non-native” species and needed to be removed.

However, Mr Kent insisted they had been using his back garden pond for 25 years and had been introduced to the UK in 1935 – 75 years ago.

He said: “I spoke to the police and they said they need to come and capture them all and take them away because they’re a non-native species and they shouldn’t be here.

“She said they will either get destroyed or they can be put somewhere where they can’t escape. To destroy them is just not right.”

Mr Payne said he believed there were plenty of better ways for public officials to spend their time and taxpayers’ money.

He insisted he preferred the sound of the frogs, at their noisiest in April and May, than the sound of noisy bikers.

He said: “I’ve told people this story and they said, ‘you’re making it up’. I reckon the police and the council must have wasted at least a week of their time each investigating this.

“The thing that annoys me with noise pollution is kids going up the road on their bikes.

“You can hear them half a mile away. Animals don’t bother me at all.”

He added: “My bedroom is at the back of the house. Most times it sounds like a bit of a tropical rainforest down here at night.

“I think it’s lovely.”