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Home News An Taisce: ‘The Irish Pond Manual: a guide to the creation and management of ponds’

An Taisce: ‘The Irish Pond Manual: a guide to the creation and management of ponds’

An Taisce have developed a suite of resources to support the creation and management of ponds across Ireland—highlighting their vital role in reversing biodiversity loss, improving water quality, and enhancing climate resilience.

An Taisce’s Legacy4LIFE project recently finished work on its ‘Ponds for Biodiversity’ project. This project worked to enhance public awareness and community consciousness about the value of these small wetland habitats for biodiversity, water quality and climate adaptation. It also worked to create guides for those interested in building their own pond.

Ponds are extraordinary reservoirs of biodiversity and have a critical role as Ireland faces significant biodiversity loss. Over 50% of Ireland’s amphibian wetlands have been lost to drainage, industrial peat extraction, pollution, and natural senescence in the past 100 years. Of the 12,200 small, enclosed water bodies across Ireland, 8,000 are less than a hectare in extent and the smallest categories have been subject to the greatest pressures.

*An Taisce’s poster highlighting the importance of ponds for biodiversity.*

Ponds have been demonstrated to host more biodiversity than rivers and lakes, particularly macroinvertebrates and less common species (two-thirds of all freshwater species!). Permanent and naturally vegetated ponds are excellent at carbon sequestration (Gilbert et al., 2014). Taylor et al. (2019) found that small ponds sequestered 20-30 times the amount of carbon compared with woodlands, grasslands and other habitats.

An Taisce’s project worked to:

establish a network of local authorities and other bodies who understand the value of ponds, and commit to protecting/creating ponds on public lands
create a set of demonstration sites across Ireland which demonstrate to practitioners and policy makers how ponds can help to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change
ascertain the status of recent pond initiatives
establish an ‘adopt a pond’ network of citizen scientists/community groups to monitor and manage the newly created ponds, or existing ponds. Information to be fed back to the National Biodiversity Centre
disseminate the project’s results to policy makers, practitioners, and other stakeholders
engage individuals to establish ponds in their gardens, with clear guidance and tips, and a portal to enter their pond location, potential for awards for the most ‘pond-friendly’ town/county in Ireland
build capacity within Ireland for pond expertise, and operators skilled in pond creation.

Learn more

View and download all resources here: www.antaisce.org/ponds-for-biodiversity-resources

EPA Report: Freshwater Biodiversity in the Irish Agricultural Landscape: The Significance of Ponds | Environmental Protection Agency and summary of findings

About author

EPA Catchments Unit

Administrator

The EPA Catchments Unit is based in Dublin, and the team is involved with catchment science, chemistry, ecology, hydromorphology, modelling, Geographic Information Systems and planning. We work with the wider EPA, all of our local authorities, the Local Authority Waters and Communities Office, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, and other public bodies and Departments to ensure we have the best available data and information about our catchments.

Who is involved?
Quite simply, everyone in Ireland has a role to play. This can be from something as simple as making sure you don’t pollute your local stream, or a local community working together to establish a Rivers Trust to enhance the rivers and lakes in their area, to a Government Department or Agency helping a Minister implement a new policy to help protect and enhance all our water bodies.

This website has been developed and is maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency, and is a collaboration between the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Local Authority Waters Programme.

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The Local Authority Waters Programme coordinates the efforts of local authorities and other public bodies in the implementation of the River Basin Management Plan, and supports local community and stakeholder involvement in managing our natural waters, for everyone’s benefit.

Environmental Protection Agency

The EPA is responsible for coordinating the monitoring, assessment and reporting on the status of our 4,842 water bodies, looking at trends and changes, determining which waterbodies are at risk and what could be causing this, and drafting environmental objectives for each.

Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage

The Department is responsible for making sure that the right policies, regulations and resources are in place to implement the Water Framework Directive, and developing a River Basin Management Plan and Programme of Measures to protect and restore our waters.