HART Projects


	Pond Restoration and Celebration Project
	Herefordshire Ponds and Newts Project

Pond Restoration and Celebration Project 2007 run by HART and Herefordshire Nature Trust Report by Project Co-ordinator Darylle Hardy The project has achieved loads over the summer thanks to the hard work of lots of volunteers and contractors. We had four more pond celebration days with a large gang of helpers and experts from HART, either stationed about the pond enthusing about wildlife, or manning the admin, tea and cakes, and making it a very enjoyable experience. Visitors to Breinton Manor and Westonbury Mill Water Gardens braved the rain, while those at Woodlea and Kenchester Aquatic Centre were more lucky. Many thanks to the owners for all their preparation work and for talking to people about the pond’s creation and management. See photos of some of the events. Madley Moat (near the tennis club) has had major tree clearance using a combination of contractors and volunteers. The previously closed canopy has been opened up so that the sun can get in, lots of debris has been dragged out of the water and habitat piles built in different places for the benefit of reptiles and amphibians. It’s now possible to get a vista across open water and even see the shape of the moat, and the water quality looks better already. However the pond will need more hard work by volunteers to manage it for wildlife into the future. Download an information sheet. At Holme Lacy, the parkland pond has been dug back to its original banks. At the moment it is still separated from the existing pond, but once life has moved in and we are sure it will hold water, the division can be dug out to join the two together again. At Staunton-on-Wye, the bulrush-choked pond has been dug out completely and a shallow margin dug on the southeastern side to increase the draw-down zone and encourage water mint and other good egg-laying plants for newts. At Honeymoor Common I have been unable to find a sustainable and affordable way of dealing with the pond that is thick with Crassula. To prevent this highly invasive weed spreading into other watercourses, the pond vegetation and silt needed to be disposed of off-site, but the cost of transporting it to composting or landfill plants was extortionate. However, in the other pond on the common Will Watson found bucket loads of great crested newts, plus a rare beetle and snail, so we are transferring work to that one. Work will involve digging a scrape in an old pond that is now just marsh, cutting down marauding willow and creating habitat piles. Finally, the Welsh Water pond at Ross-on-Wye has been subjected to tree management, with pollarding, coppicing and the clearing of willow where it has established in the pond itself. I’ve worked out that to the end of September we have had the support of 41 different volunteers putting in a total of 602 hours, which is tremendous! Many thanks to all the HART members who have spent time helping with celebration events, pond work and admin!
Some of the ponds to be restored


Pond celebration events

Examining pond life at Westonbury Mill and an enjoyable, albeit wet, event at Breinton.


We are grateful to the Herefordshire Rivers LEADER+ Programme, the SITA Trust, and the Wye Valley AONB for funding the Pond Restoration and Celebration Project.


©N.Hand	Herefordshire Ponds and Newts Project 2003 - 2006

The aim of the project was to assess the health of the ponds in Herefordshire, and the distribution of the great crested newt and other amphibians in the county. As the great crested newt is a Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) species we had the opportunity to apply for funds for the work. The Herefordshire Rivers Leader+ programme funded a substantial percentage of the project, which was therefore restricted to the parts of Herefordshire for which Leader+ funds could be used, namely the 96 parishes that bordered or included the four main Herefordshire rivers: the Wye, Lugg, Frome and Arrow. The LEADER+ area covers 880 square kilometres, roughly a third of the county. Over 250 ponds in this area were surveyed, generating an excellent record base for the county. The funding also allowed us to provide pond and amphibian training for well over 100 people, thus expanding the availability of these skills in the county. Great Crested Newt distribution in Herefordshire before the start of the project 57 great crested newt sites had been identified within Herefordshire. Their distribution is shown on the map: some of the dots may represent several ponds. 40 of those sites occur within the Herefordshire Rivers area, shown in blue.

Herefordshire Council Crown Copyright LA 09069L (2003)

For larger map click here

Great Crested Newt distribution in Herefordshire in 2006 at the end of the project

The Project Finishes Successfully!

The project has finished! So firstly some thanks:

to our funders: the Herefordshire Rivers LEADER+ Programme, who provided the bulk of the money for the project, and continual encouragement and support as the project progressed. Also the SEED programme (was part of the National Lottery), the Environment Agency (Wales) and the Herefordshire Biodiversity Partnership. We also received support from Froglife and the HCT.

to the many pond owners who gave us permission to come on their land and survey the ponds.

to the key staff on the project: Project Consultant Will Watson and Survey Team Coordinators Jules Agate, Angela Charlton and Lydia Robbins.

to the volunteers: We owe a big debt of gratitude to all the volunteers who worked so hard in many ways for the project – surveying, data entry at the HBRC, accounts, administration, training and project support and so on. Over 2000 hours were logged on the timesheets, with a value to the project of around £20,000, allowing us to claim £13,500 in real funds to held pay for the project. We stopped using timesheets in September 2005 because we had reached the budget limit on volunteer time payments, but we know a lot more volunteer hours were worked after that, not least by the authors of the atlas: Amphibians and Reptiles of Herefordshire.

The Atlas costs £6.99 and can be purchased from HART committee members, at HART meetings, from local bookshops, from the NHBS on the internet or from the HBRC at the Town Hall. You can also order it from the HBRC by post (adding £2.00 p&p). Since the launch in December 2006 we have sold nearly 200 copies and the feedback we have had from people who have bought or seen it is how good it is with some fantastic photographs which clearly illustrate the text and aid identification

Final Report and Ponds Assessment

Virtually all the work is completed. Will has produced a final draft of his end project report – just a few details on the results to iron out. We are indebted to Stephen West who used our pond survey data as a basis for his MSc thesis about assessing pond suitability for great crested newt presence using a Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) calculation (see below). The final results are based on the analysis Stephen has done.

The surveys have shown that 46% of all ponds have great crested newts, and 48% have smooth newts, but only 29% have palmate newts. 11% have all three, which is quite a high proportion by UK standards. So, in Herefordshire, while the great crested newt is the protected one, the palmate is the least common.

The Quality Assessment of Ponds bar chart shows that only around 40% of ponds were found to be of good or excellent quality. The theory suggests that great crested newts prefer good quality ponds, and results shown in the chart just about corroborate this, notably that very few ponds with great cresteds were rated Poor, while a significantly higher proportion of ponds without them were Poor. But there were almost as many excellent ponds without them as with. Great crested newts were found in 40% of poor and below average ponds which could suggest that these are populations hanging on in ponds of declining quality, which would benefit from restoration before the population dies out.

Habitat Suitability Index (HSI):

This index is based on 10 criteria including surrounding terrestrial habitat, pond size, pond quality/clarity, plant cover, tree cover, presence of fish and waterfowl, and so on, which were all recorded in the surveys for each pond. From the HSI values, the ponds are graded as poor, below average, average, good, excellent. This data assessment can help us to identify which ponds in which areas would most benefit from restoration and improvement work so that the great crested newt can thrive and expand its range.

Project links:
Herefordshire and Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust
The Sites and Monuments Register

The Herefordshire Pond and Newts Project has been part funded by the European Union (EAGGF) and DEFRA through the Herefordshire Rivers LEADER+ programme.

The project has also been part Lottery funded by the £15.3 million Social, Economic and Environmental Development (SEED) Programme. The SEED Programme, managed by the Royal Society for Nature Conservation (RSNC) and 11 consortium partners, distributes National Lottery money on behalf of the New Opportunities Fund, under its Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities funding programme.

Further funds have been received from English Nature and the Environment Agency, Wales.

This project has funded the development of this website.