I recently made a visit to Ely, the vast council estate I had lived on for 25 years, and was pleased to hear how residents there had banded together to successfully stop the development of green fields that were scheduled for housing developments. This showed what can be done when local people pull together to fight for a cause they believe in.

The Ely recreation fields besides being an introduction to the surrounding countryside provide a place for children and the young people of the area to go. There is a playground and local people enjoy walking across the fields.

Although there has been success in Ely, the fight elsewhere is just beginning or already underway. There are plans for houses to be built on green fields that border the Waterhall and Fairwater council estates too. Further out at Junction 33 there are proposals for a new business park and other development.

Meanwhile a campaign has been underway to stop the threatened destruction of valuable parkland in Bute Park that is next to Cardiff Castle and follows the River Taff along its bank. The people of Cardiff want to see trees, green grass, flowerbeds and wildlife not roads and roundabouts, traffic and heavy lorries.

There is an action group for all of Cardiff called Consult Cardiff as well as other groups set up on Facebook.The founders of Consult Cardiff, although coming from the Fairwater and Pentrebane estates, say that the threats to the green spaces should be a matter of concern to all Cardiff residents because other areas are effected by these developments either directly or indirectly.

Stop the Waterhall Housing Plans has a petition and is hoping the sale of land by the 3rd Earl of Plymouth, who owns it, never goes ahead. This group seek to prevent the subsequent building by housing developers on the Earl of Plymouth's land.

Another Facebook group called Green Cardiff describes itself as "The real GREEN Cardiff page with links to genuine green action groups not greenwash groups. Campaigning to stop Cardiff being concreted over - and FOR a real GREEN CITY."

This is the alternative Facebook group to Councillor Neil McEvoy's group of the same name but with the bilingual addition of Caredydd Gwyrdd after Green Cardiff. He is a councillor for Plaid Cymru as well as deputy leader of Cardiff County Council and has been promoting the proposed development at Junction 33, whilst at the same time claiming he is opposed to the destruction of the green spaces around the city.

McEvoy, who lives in the Fairwater area, is not popular with many of the people fighting to oppose housing developments because he fails to allow freedom of speech on his Facebook group page and has been deleting messages by people who fail to agree with him or who are critical of what he is doing. There has also been a lot of trouble at public meetings and the police have been called to one of these.

McEvoy claims that the messages that are deleted have nothing to do with the matter the group was started for and he questions what the point is of people who disagree with him attending meetings he will be at.

Meanwhile away from the battleground and the campaigning, I was pleased to see another very positive step being taken by Ely residents to help nature conservation. My former neighbours Jess and Kevin have been inspired by when I lived next door and had a pond to put in one of their own and they told me that they have frogs and newts breeding in it.

My very good friend Jane Hayes, who has been very active in the campaign to oppose the development plans, has a marvellous pond in her garden where she has frogs, newts and toads and she told me she had also spotted a Grass Snake there. Jane's garden also has plenty of wild bits with long grass and under some sheets of corrugated iron she has found Slowworms and Field Voles.

Jane's nextdoor neighbours have now got a pond in their back too, and my friend Vivian Thomas, who also lives in Ely told me that he had as many as 30 frogs in his garden there.

So while amphibian populations are declining worldwide in many places the people of Ely have been giving these little animals a real helping hand by providing freshwater ponds for them to breed in.

I hope that many more people will follow their lead. Who knows - maybe one day Ely will be known not as a huge council estate in South Wales but as an important area for nature conservation?