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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/03/back-from-the-dead-the-zombie-ponds-repumping-nature-into-essex-farmland>
"When Joe Gray coppiced a patch of woodland on his Essex farm, he noticed that
an abandoned pond sprang back into life after it was exposed to sunlight.
“It was a hole in the woods with some leaves in it – we didn’t think of it as a
pond,” he says. Since then, he and his wife, Emma, have restored 11 “zombie”
ponds on their 450-hectare (1,100-acre) regenerative farm. They’ve also
persuaded a group of neighbouring farmers to bring back to life 80 ponds within
a 3-mile (5km) radius near Braintree.
Ponds that were dried up, shaded over or dominated by brambles have been opened
up to sunlight and dug out, and are now burgeoning with rare aquatic plants,
dragonflies and great-crested newts – also providing food and water for birds
and bats.
“It’s ideal for farmers,” says Emma Gray. “You get a lot of biodiversity bang
for your buck in a marginal area for farming – you’re not taking productive
land out but quickly you build up a network for species to hop across a
landscape. It’s a no-brainer.”
This pond restoration effort has been galvanised by the Essex lost ponds
project, a partnership between Essex Wildlife Trust and the RSPB. Volunteers
have identified 17,200 ponds across the county, of which 10,400 have
disappeared, mostly because of agricultural intensification in the 20th
century. When tractors replaced horses, there was less need for ponds for
livestock and when fields were enlarged and drained, and hedgerows grubbed up,
many ponds were filled in.
Reviving old ponds is burgeoning across Britain thanks to the pioneering pond
restoration work of Carl Sayer, a professor of geography at University College
London, who has identified 8,000 “ghost” ponds (completely obliterated but
identifiable via old maps) in Norfolk and has restored at least 50 ghost ponds
and 400 zombie ponds – degraded, dried up but ready to be brought back to life.
“You could stand by a pond that’s been opened up to sunlight and marvel at it
all day,” says Mark Nowers, the RSPB’s turtle dove conservation adviser in
Essex. “The dragonflies, the pond-skaters, the whirligig beetles, the
dragonflies, the birds flying overhead – it’s just pumping out nature into the
farmed landscape.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
