Vic Froome, who built the observation post at the Vale Pond, is incensed at the state the reserve has been left in. (Picture by Tom Tardif, 0695765)

ANTI-SOCIAL behaviour is causing havoc at the Vale Pond nature reserve, according to a warden.

Some 500 pieces of litter, including bottles, takeaway food containers and crisp bags were left in and around the bird hide, following a recent unauthorised party that had been held there.

Conservationist Vic Froome, who built the observation and interpretation hide, said people regularly urinated in it and he had been forced to clear human excrement from it as well.

Three information boards had been torn from a wall, one of them for the fifth time.

‘I went there on the Sunday after Christmas and it looked like a toilet,’ he said.

Two visitors had been using the hide for its proper purpose and Mr Froome said that after apologising to them, he cleared the rubbish out of the hide.

‘But I didn’t look outside and when I went back the next day I saw that there was rubbish everywhere.’