Cambs Pond Case Studies
Cambridgeshire's largely arable landscape means many ponds traditionally associated with mixed farming have been lost over the past century. Remaining ponds face ongoing pressures from intensive agriculture and development. We have been delivering DLL ponds in Cambs for three years now and demand for the scheme is set to continue.
Email ponds@fwageast.org.uk to get involved.
Yelling Pond Restoration
This old farmyard pond had once been essential to watering livestock and plough horses but since falling out of use it had become very over grown with trees and scrub. What little water remained was dark and full of leaf litter. DLL funding meant the pond could be restored. Within a year its warm, light shallows were alive with tadpoles, invertebrates and marginal plants such as water mint and the charmingly named 'cursed crowfoot', pictured flowering here.
Madingley Brick Pits
One of three pits left by the extraction of clay for brickmaking in centuries past, this pond was dredged and coppiced on its southwestern banks to enable light to reach the waters' edge. Efforts were almost immediately repaid with a delightful bloom of water crowfoot, previously unrecorded at the site. We believe the seed had lain dormant in Victorian bottles scooped from the base of the pond. This species is a good indicator of water quality and is one of several used by great crested newts for egg laying.
Pond Creations at
Kingfisher Bridge
It was a pleasure to work with the knowledgeable manager of this privately owned nature reserve to create three ponds in wet lying grassland on the edge of the fen habitat. A wetland was created here when 250 acres of farmland was 'rewilded' by a pioneering farmer back in the mid 1990s. We are confident these new ponds will offer a stronghold for breeding populations of great crested newts, complementing the ongoing conservation management for endangered species at the site.