Biodiversity boost for Ponds in the Tees Valley
Ponds and aquatic wildlife throughout the Tees Valley will be receiving a boost by the Tees Valley Biodiversity Partnership. The partnership’s Tees Valley “Pondscape” initiative has just been awarded one hundred and two thousand pound from DEFRA’s Countdown 2010 fund toward a two hundred thousand project.
The project will address the loss and fragmentation of ponds in the rural, industrial and urban landscapes of the Tees Valley. Ponds will be rigorously mapped and surveyed to produce a pondscape picture of the Tees Valley. This will be used to strategically create ponds and carry out practical habitat management to ensure that ponds provide habitats for pond creatures such as frogs, toads and newts.
Ponds are now a UK priority habitat because they are vital for aquatic insects, birds and mammals but have been rapidly disappearing from our landscape. This has been mirrored in the Tees Valley with changes in farming practises resulting in the neglect of many farms and ponds being drained in urban areas to make way for developments.
Malcolm Steele of the Joint Strategy Unit and chairman of the Tees Valley Biodiversity Partnership says “This landscape scale project will be a real boost to the Tees Valley Biodiversity Action Plan. It will enable us to pinpoint where the best ponds for wildlife are in the Tees Valley and to focus efforts on creating and caring for ponds to ensure that generations to come have ponds that are thriving with wildlife”.
A summary of the Tees Valley Pondscape project plan can be downloaded here
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