Bringing ghost and zombie ponds back from the dead

Europe has lost at least 50 percent of its ponds over the last century. Many have been filled in to make room for new developments, or drained to expand farmland. Ponds may seem like a small part of the environmental landscape, but are actually crucial to biodiversity and the fight against climate change.

RAZOR's Reya El-Salahi meets Professor Carl Sayer and Dr Helen Greaves from the Norfolk Ponds Project, who are on a mission to restore ponds in the UK and spark an environmental restoration.

As part of an initiative backed by University College London and an EU-funded consortium called the Ponderful project, they lead expeditions to the county of Norfolk, where they aim to restore two kinds of ponds: ‘ghost ponds’, that have either been drained or filled, and ‘zombie ponds’ that are too overgrown and not functioning as well as they can.

By creating ‘living ponds’, they hope to bring back scores of species to rural heartlands, and also create a constellation of ‘pond stepping stones’ that animals can use to move to cooler parts of the country if the weather gets too hot, due to global heating. Removing overgrowth in ponds can also reduce their CO2 and methane emissions.

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