Boost for Tees Valley Ponds.

A new initiative to redress the on-going loss of ponds and their associated wildlife across the Tees Valley has just been launched by the Tees Valley Biodiversity Partnership. The Tees Valley Pondscape project will map and monitor ponds, create new ones and restore some of our best ponds for aquatic wildlife.

Natural England has awarded the project just over one hundred thousand ponds from their Countdown 2010 fund.

Malcolm Steele of the Joint Strategy Unit and chairman of the Tees Valley Biodiversity Partnership says "This 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."

The Tees Valley Wildlife Trust is currently recruiting a Pondscape Project Officer to deliver the project. The first stage of the project has already started with staff and volunteers from the Wildflower Ark and the Wildlife Trust working to produce pondscape maps that will show the location of all major ponds in farmland, towns and industrial sites so that in the spring more detailed surveys of pond insects and amphibians can begin.

For more information contact Sue Antrobus at the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust on 01287 636382.

CAPTION(S):

Alan Price, Gatehouse Studio