Big Pond Thaw

Thanks to everyone who’s submitting Big Pond Thaw forms at the moment.

I’d been expecting a lull in returns, but as they’re still coming in pretty frequently we will hold on a bit longer before reporting back.

The Big Pond Dip 2009 results will be following soon after that – but as you can probably imagine things have been hectic and our timetable for reporting back has been a bit disrupted.

British Ecological Society web site highlights ponds

The authoritative BES policy website picked up the ponds report last week.

And the BES also noted another issue that we were keen to link to the generally poor quality of ponds.

And that is the fact that 75% of rivers and streams in England and Wales will fail new standards which define the range of plants, fish, invertebrates and algae you should find in clean and unpolluted rivers.

The Environment Agency says:

“Using the new classification system [for a thing called the Water Framework Directive], results for assessed rivers in England and Wales show that for overall ecological classification 26% of rivers are good or better, 60% are moderate, 12% are poor and 2% are bad.”

It’s worth noting that the new system is a five point scale with water bodies assessed as: bad, poor, moderate, good or high. In theory, all waters should be at ‘good’ or ‘high’ status. Most are not and, at present, virtually no rivers in England and Wales are ‘high’ status.

More information on the Environment Agency website.

Jeremy Biggs on solving the problems facing our ponds

Alongside Jeremy Cooke’s report we also filmed a short piece on the pollution problems facing ponds, and how we can make a real difference with new pond creation.

View it here.

For more information look at Pond Conservation’s Million Ponds Project.