It is easy to take ponds for granted; I expect everyone reading this blog has seen a pond, probably fallen over in one. They are too familiar. On the other hand, very few of us have visited the classic touchstones of raw nature, the Yellowstone National Park or the Great barrier Reef, or seen a bison or lynx out in the wilds. Yet these distant places and photogenic creatures have a powerful hold on our wild imaginations. Even the exemplars of the wilding literature seldom touch on ponds, instead they came along as a sort of afterthought, handily created by beavers or dug out for great crested news. 

New pond, West Chevington (Photo below by Mike Jeffries).

Which is shame because ponds are one of the best, and easiest, means to boost wildlife in a landscape. They are the only habitat I know of that is found on every continent on Planet Earth ( (apart from bare rock), yes, even on the Antarctic, on the Peninsular. Ponds are found in the centre of vast continental deserts, on tiny oceanic islands, lost in the impenetrable depths of fetid jungle or thick with moraine mud high up on mountain glaciers. They are fundamental to the Earth’s landscapes. They are ancient habitats too, the Famous Rynie fossil beds from Scotland, which capture the first plants and invertebrates venturing on land, look to be ponds. The beds of sandstone, mudstone and coal along the Northumbrian coast were part of a huge carboniferous delta riddled with ponds. Even contemporary ponds can be surprisingly old, such as the post glacial pingo ponds in Norfolk or ice age ponds of Herefordshire. Some of the most recent ponds in south east Northumberland reflect our social history too, where land has subsided over coal mines, from about the 1940s onwards. 

Taking cores from ponds to measure carbon in sediments (Photo below by Mike Jeffries)

The last thirty years has seen something of a renaissance of our understanding of ponds, led by the Freshwater Habitats Trust. Ponds in Northumberland have played a particular role in this too, mostly from work at Hauxley Nature Reserve tracking the comings and goings of pond animals over the years and how this has been affected by the yearly variation weather, wet or dry. Northumberland ponds were also the vanguard for work on how much carbon gets stored in these apparently small features. Answer: a significant amount…. ponds may be small but there are a lot of them. 

Subsidence pond in arable field near Ellington (Photo below by Mike Jeffries)

We now know that ponds are home to disproportionately more freshwater life than larger lakes or rivers, although these larger freshwater habitats still get most of the attention. We know that ponds are great for animals that live round about such as birds or bats which home in to gorge on insects that hatch from the water, a highly nutritious food, or pollinators that benefit from the plants around the edges.  We know that ponds hold back flood water, cool the microclimate and  mop up pollutants. All around the world ponds are important in folklore too, often magical or spiritual places, portals to other worlds. 

Wildwood pond that never freezes. (Photo below by Mike Jeffries).

Wilding and nature recovery plans seldom make pond creation a key part of the project, but ponds should be in every plan given how fundamental they are to landscapes. One problem could be that the advice about pond creation is often a bit daunting, what the Freshwater Habitats Trust call the ‘myths of pond creation’.  Ignore all that stuff about ponds needing to be so big and so deep and not drying out. The key is clean water, plus a good surround of wetland or rank vegetation. It is better to have a small pond with good hinterland than one big pond taking up the whole space. Don’t dig one pond, dig a cluster, some deeper, some shallow. Don’t worry about adding plants, pond life will find its own way there. If you have got an old pond that is filled in, lost under a wall of scrub or trees you’ll be surprised how they can come back to life with a bit of clearing, with plenty of examples from the restoration of Ghost Ponds in Norfolk, spotted on old Ordnance Survey maps but sometimes invisible in the landscape today. Equally if you have a pond that has filled in to be a lovely area of swampy wetland leave it be and dig a new pond nearby. 

The Hauxley ponds pictured below, monitoring over the years - Mike Jeffries

Wilding a landscape depends so much on allowing natural processes to guide what happens. Given that nature creates ponds in every landscape all around the world don’t be shy of making sure ponds are part of a Wilder Northumberland. 

Mike is a freshwater ecologist and Visiting Fellow at Northumbria University. He has worked on ponds and wetlands in Northumbria for forty years and still finds them beautiful and baffling in equal measure