When Rick Watts was six years old, he persuaded his mother to buy him the Observer's Book of Pond Life.

Now he is an adult, nothing can stop his commitment to ponds in east Sussex - not even moving to Canada.

Mr Watts trained as a pond warden on a Southern Water scheme, run in conjunction with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV).

He completed his training last year and, before leaving Sussex, he set up the East Sussex Pond Wardens' web site.

He said: "When the East Sussex Pond Wardens' Scheme was set-up, I wanted to be able to publicise what we were doing.

"Here were a bunch of people from all walks of life and of all ages who shared an interest in ponds and pond conservation and who saw the work as a community service.

"The web seemed the obvious place, although with Yahoo and Inkotomi charging for search engine registration it was difficult to reach a wide audience without spending a bit more money."

Although 41-year-old Mr Watts has many years of information technology experience, he had to learn a new set of skills to design the web site. He said: "I have never been one for learning from books so I dived straight in and learned by trial and error.

"I spent evenings away from the office just playing with the software and continually asking my wife for opinions about how things looked."

He continues to run the site from his new home thousands of miles away in Edmonton, Alberta.

He said the tools used to maintain the site could be used from almost anywhere.

Mr Watts said: "The site is hosted in the United States but it might just as well be Outer Mongolia - it makes no difference. My telephone lines are perhaps the most difficult part of the whole thing.

"We live about 20 kilometres from town and the rural telephone networks in Canada are of significantly lower quality than in the UK, so my connections are sporadic and tend not to be very fast.

"We're due to get assymetric digital subscriber lines but I'm not holding my breath."

The area of the site provoking the most interest was the great crested newt database, which provides details of all reported newt sightings.

He said: "It is illegal to disturb their habitat in a 500 metre circle around a known colony. The site contains data which is searchable by parish and grid reference, so people can check if a pond contains newts before commencing development or conservation work."

www.sussexponds.org.uk