Last week I went to a trustees’ meeting of Pond Conservation and felt guilty that I hadn’t yet got around actually to joining. So now I have. I am a fully paid up member of an excellent but small conservation organisation.
It’s interesting that we use (actually, I don’t) pond life as a term of abuse. Why don’t we use wood life, soil life or seashore life as an abusive phrase? I guess it’s because the bottom of ponds are thought of as slimy and smelly. Am I selling this organisation to you?
The thing is, that Pond Conservation is about a lot more than just ponds – it’s about all freshwater life – but ponds are very familiar and everyday places to start. And they are neglected too. If every garden pond and every pond in the countryside were full of life then we would have much more wildlife around us.
Excuse me for going back to a bird example but there is good evidence that tree sparrows, one of the farmland birds that has undergone massive declines in numbers, produce more young when they nest close to water bodies and the reason for that is that the water bodies have large insects such as dragonflies that can disappear down baby tree sparrows’ throats. So countryside ponds, garden ponds and village green ponds will not only have life in them they will enhance the wildlife all around them (and tree sparrows aren’t at all slimy).
Pond Conservation’s Million Ponds Project is an absolutely fantastic project and has involved a large number of partner organisations from the Ministry of Justice (fair rights for ponds!) to the British Aggregates Association (we dig ponds?!).
Rather spookily, just as I typed the words ‘million ponds’ in the paragraph above a press release arrived in my inbox telling me about a joint project between Pond Conservation and the RSPB (funded by Biffaward) – so there can be no clearer sign that I should tell you about it. It’s part of the million ponds project and will create 15 new clean water ponds at the RSPB Cantley Marsh nature reserve. This project will benefit, it is hoped, Norfolk hawker dragonflies, grass snakes, rare aquatic stoneworts, otters and a few birds too.
If you have a pond or if you have £24 per year then why not have a look at Pond Conservation’s excellent website and sign up!
PS Pond Conservation is looking for a trustee with financial expertise to act as an Honorary Treasurer. Contact me if you are interested.
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Already signed up are several thousand Otters who spend their time going to garden ponds and cleaning out all those exotic fish most people think they need in their garden ponds! Here is a good link to a video taken in Carlisle -http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/video-persistent-otter-breaks-into-carlisle-garden-pond-for-fish-feast-1.882112?referrerPath=home/2.1962