What's in a pond?

Lucy has a number of sites where she's already restored or created new ponds. Its success is definitely a testament to dedicated and enthusiastic landowners, because trying to bring back biodiversity to working land isn't easy, as you're gonna hear at our next stop in Ware with Nicholas and Henrietta Buxton...

Henrietta - I just went round the farm and we wrote a list of about 30 odd ponds from existing ponds to scrapes, to the old slurry lagoon, to where we thought we might like to have a pond as well. Then I rang up Lucy and said, what can we do? Can FWAG help? And she came along and from there, it's just been well, I've been very excited. She found some funding and we did 10 last year and hoping to do another six or seven this year.

Harry - And have you both seen an improvement in such a short space of time? Have you seen the benefits of putting these bodies of water in?

Nicholas - I think it's early days, but we've been involved in stewardship for a number of years and making connections within the landscape. So we're joining up bodies of water with hedgerows and stewardship, strips of grass, margins and flowers. So really reconnecting the landscape and water was something that was missing and we've been able to do that.

Harry - Did those benefits come in any form to the value? Not just in biodiversity, but perhaps economic value?

Nicholas - In truth I don't think there is. I think this is something that we both feel passionately about. We're involved with. We want to invest in and more and more the stewardship agreements are oriented towards celebrating what we have enhancing things and looking after the trees and the hedgerows and planting, which is a sea change from where farming was 30 or 40 years ago. And I think it's just a part of the landscape that for lots of reasons has been lost and overlooked. And now we're able to bring it back to life.

Harry - Could I ask you about the subsidies? Could I say, I don't know if I could ask how much? Can I ask how much?

Nicholas - I haven't got an answer for you because there is the BPS, the basic payment scheme, that's going away, and that is a serious challenge for this farm and for all farms.

Harry - What is that? Sorry?

Nicholas - The basic payment scheme is an area based payment for which the industry has grown used to and is being taken away. And so what was a significant element of our income is being reduced. And therefore we're looking for opportunities to replace that, which leads me into stewardship generally. So these are important cash flow contributions.

Harry - Would you expect those subsidies to provide a form of income? Will they, if they don't provide a form of income, will they pay for the project in its entirety? Or do you still need to front some cost when pursuing this relationship with nature?

Nicholas - We will apply the monies that we receive and we will not make money. So to that extent, it's a luxury, but I believe it's a very important part of what farming can do for the future to retain that connection with people that enjoy this landscape. We have to try!

Harry - After excavation only a few months ago, this pond is still recovering. It was once neglected and ranked, but now grass shoots are reaching skywards from the muddy tractormarks and life is beginning to flourish once again, and there's a lot going on at this site, as part of the monitoring process, Ginny from FWAG is collecting water, eDNA samples and looking for signs of the great crested newts. This will be done over varying timeframes for the next 25 years to collect data and better inform the project in the future.

Jilly - So we take 20 samples from around the margins of the pond. They all go into a test tube, which gets sent to a lab to establish if great crested newts are using the pond already, or if they're yet to find it.

Harry - Will you get evidence back of just the great crested newts or will you find out everything else that's in here as well?

Jilly - No, they're just looking for great crested newt DNA.

Harry - How long will that take to get back?

Jilly - We get the results in August.

Harry - Oh, quite a wait.

Jilly - Yes. Well we are testing all of the ponds that have been established so far under the scheme nationally. So, the lab's gonna be kept quite busy this summer.

Harry - 900 samples will be sent off this year in the UK alone, but it's not just Jilly here with her eDNA samples. Adjacent to us is also Steve Brooks, a former natural history museum entomologist, who now oversees the river fly monitoring initiative. And he has come properly kitted up. You've got your net right here Steve. Do you think we can have a little go and see what we can pull up?

Steve - Yeah. Okay. Yeah, let's try that. I'll just put some water in this tray so we can see it's in the net.

Harry - It's quite a professional looking net as well this Steve.

Steve - Yeah. These are expensive bits of kit actually that'll set you back about 80 pounds.

Harry - Not to be lost when you're out and about!

Steve - So I've just trawled that through the open water really. So we can see lots of toad tadpoles here, the jet black tadpoles, frog tadpoles are speccy but toad tadpoles are jet black. We can see pond olive may fly. We can see a lot of nymphs of water boatman, we can see beetle larva. There's a diving beetle larva.

Harry - And this is all made easier in our white tray here.

Steve - Indeed.

Harry - It's absolute teaming. I've done a little bit of this myself and I don't think I've actually seen quite as much as we are seeing here.

Steve - No, I mean, it's oh, there's a water mite. You can see there's a lot of stuff there. And it's typical of things you'd expect in an open water habitat and it will get more diverse as the plants start to develop in the pond. Now that the light's been let into the pond, ponds are best for biodiversity when they're open, because it lets the light into the pond plants develop. And that attracts a lot of other organisms. So when the ponds have been neglected for decades, they basically turn into small spinnies and they're not really very good for anything.

Harry - As I was leaving Henrietta, regales this tale of their latest project, how they found the remnants of an old pond and upon digging a fountain erupted filling the excavation naturally. We'll be going on a ghost pond hunt of our own very shortly. You'll not want to miss it!