\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>f you glanced into a green field and saw a yellow digger tearing into the turf, you might assume it was another site for new houses. But the two circle-shaped scars of dark soil on a Norfolk pasture are ghost ponds being brought back to life by an innovative and cheap form of nature restoration.<\/p>\n \u201cIt looks awful now. \u2018What have they done? It\u2019s a disaster!\u2019\u201d says Carl Sayer, a professor of geography at UCL, who is dancing with glee around the bleak-looking, freshly dug hole. \u201cThe colonisation is so quick. Within a year, it is full of water plants. Within two years, it looks like it\u2019s been there forever. It\u2019s a spectacular recovery, and you\u2019re truly recovering ancient assemblages of plants.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Prof Carl Sayer and team near East Harling, Norfolk. L to R: Prof Helene Burningham, Hayley McMechan, Tim Holt-Wilson, Carl Sayer, Tim Kett, Dan Hoare and Gilbert Addison.<\/span> Photograph: Ali Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The two ponds returning on farmland are the 25th and 26th ice age ponds to be restored by Sayer\u2019s team of academics, volunteers and an enthusiastic digger driver in the Brecks, a hotspot for ancient ponds and \u201cpingos\u201d formed by ice-melt 10,000 years ago.<\/p>\n Over the past two centuries, thousands of such ponds have been filled in as land was drained and \u201cimproved\u201d for crops.<\/p>\n So far, most of the 26 ponds have been revived on land bought by Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which has supported the restoration effort with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund\u2019s Brecks Fen Edge and Rivers landscape partnership scheme.<\/p>\n But the latest two ponds have been dug out thanks to a Norfolk farmer, who is one of an increasing number of private landowners reviving ghost and \u201czombie\u201d ponds.<\/p>\n New surveys by Sayer\u2019s team have revealed that 22 of the ghost ponds restored since 2022 now support 136 species of wetland plant. This represents 70% of the wetland flora found in more than 400 ponds on Norfolk Wildlife Trust\u2019s Thompson Common, an internationally important nature reserve whose ponds have survived since the ice age.<\/p>\n The resurrected ponds include rare species lost from the surviving ponds, such as various-leaved pondweed, which is only found on one other site in Norfolk.<\/p>\n The magic, Sayer points out, lies in a layer of distinctively dark soil, which his team carefully reveals.<\/p>\n <\/span>A member of the team unearths an animal bone from the soil of the former pond\u2019s base. <\/span> Photograph: Ali Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n This peat-like sediment is the old bottom of the pond, formed from centuries of decaying aquatic plants, and it is still full of seeds.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a perfect time capsule,\u201d says Sayer. \u201cIt\u2019s dark, moist, cool and anoxic \u2013 there\u2019s no oxygen. This is nature\u2019s emergency recovery mechanism. We\u2019ve buggered almost everything up but this will still bring them back.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the pond restorers, Hayley McMechan, is working on a germination trial for her PhD. Sediment of different antiquities from these ghost ponds is being monitored in tanks at Kew Gardens\u2019 seed bank at Wakehurst. It is likely some seeds older than 1,000 years old can still spring to life.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shows you the resilience of nature \u2013 that seeds have evolved to last that long,\u201d says McMechan. \u201cIt\u2019s not rewilding, it\u2019s not restoration, it\u2019s resurrection. If you want to recreate a woodland you\u2019ve got to plan it and plant your own trees. Here, a human can\u2019t get it wrong \u2013 it\u2019s all ready to go, like an instant cake mix \u2013 just add water.\u201d<\/p>\n Resurrecting a pond begins with Prof Helene Burningham, a colleague of Sayer\u2019s in the UCL geography department, studying old maps. Many small ponds are missed off maps but old field names sometimes provide clues. Lidar (light detection and ranging) is also used to identify depressions in the land, while satellite imagery can reveal former pond sites which often show up as a circle of green \u2013 still having a higher moisture content \u2013 during dry summers such as this one.<\/p>\n On site, the team start by using an auger to drill down to confirm the bottom of the ghost pond, a soil layer also characterised by white fragments of pond snail shells which have a more pointed whorl than land snails.<\/p>\n Then a straight trench is dug to find where the sediment is deepest, which reveals the centre of the pond. \u201cThe middle is never where you think it is but careful digging will find the centre and then you work out from there,\u201d says Sayer.<\/p>\n A second trench is dug across the first to form a cross of trenches, which helps identify the exact dimensions of the pond.<\/p>\n The digger then takes over but it is precision work to create the gently declining natural edges of the pond, rather than steps or shelves, and being careful not to dig below the seed layer.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we get to the right level we can leave it to Dale the digger driver,\u201d says Sayer. \u201cHe is truly brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>A member of the team unearths pottery from the soil of the former pond\u2019s base which they speculate is either of Roman-age or medieval origin.<\/span> Photograph: Ali Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Digging out a pond takes a long day but Dale Garnham \u201cabsolutely loves\u201d this unusual task. \u201cThis is my favourite sort of work, I just hope it really kicks off. On a building site, you dig a hole, put a pipe in and cover it up. So it\u2019s nice to come back here and see what you\u2019ve done and how it progresses.\u201d<\/p>\n As Garnham skilfully scrapes off the top soil, volunteers identify treasures beneath. Volunteer Dan Hoare finds a pristine shell of a banded river snail which probably lived in Roman times. Another volunteer identifies a shard of Roman pottery and late neolithic \u201cpot boilers\u201d \u2013 charred flints heated in a fire to boil water. \u201cWetlands were a place where people needed to be,\u201d says Sayer.<\/p>\n The only thing they are not pleased to find is an old section of plastic drain. The digger will follow the drain \u2013 installed during agricultural improvements in the 1980s \u2013 breaking it up. \u201cAny pipes we find are smashed. We don\u2019t want water draining away but we don\u2019t want water to drain in either,\u201d says Sayer.<\/p>\n Once the ponds are filled naturally with clean rainwater, they are rapidly colonised. Some sceptics have suggested the plants are not from ancient seeds but are brought in by waterbirds. But Sayer points to not only unique rare plants in the restored ponds not found anywhere nearby but the sheer quantity of new plants. \u201cAll this cannot come in so fast on a duck\u2019s bottom,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Despite them not being connected to any other waterways, the ninespine stickleback fish has also rapidly returned to the ghost ponds.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve no idea how it got there. There is no biological mechanism that would do it without a hydrological connection.\u201d Could solving that conundrum be another PhD? \u201cWe want a few mysteries like this. Keeps me in a job,\u201d says Sayer.<\/p>\n According to Sayer, pond restoration provides a huge nature boost for a modest sum of money, much less than it costs to restore a meadow or ancient woodland.<\/p>\n He and his team of volunteers can excavate a pond in a day for about \u00a32,000, with the main expenses being hiring a digger, a dumper and a skilled digger driver.<\/p>\n \u201cLandowners are keen to do it \u2013 the only barrier is funding,\u201d says Sayer. \u201cMillions go into river restoration but they are so hard to fix. Restoring a pond has a small footprint and a massive impact. So many wetlands have been filled in. You could take what we\u2019re doing here and spread it everywhere.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll never be involved in anything so important. It\u2019s the ecological restoration you dream of.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you glanced into a green field and saw a yellow digger tearing into the turf, you might assume it was another site for new houses. But the two circle-shaped scars of dark soil on a Norfolk pasture are ghost ponds being brought back to life by an innovative and cheap form of nature restoration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[13908,723,2456,4905,2152,13909,6386,13910,8732,1856,2616],"class_list":{"0":"post-22682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-1000yearold","9":"tag-ancient","10":"tag-englands","11":"tag-ghost","12":"tag-grow","13":"tag-iceage","14":"tag-plants","15":"tag-ponds","16":"tag-resurrection","17":"tag-seeds","18":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}