To dredge or not to dredge? Woodland ponds
by Angus, 24 January, 2013, 7 comments
In deciding how much you should be dredging your pond or ponds you may want to do a sort of "loss vs benefit analysis" - ponds which are soak-aways from heavily-fertilised agricultural areas are likely to be poor in wildlife and by dredging you may be able to remove polluted sediments and hopefully create silt traps and ways to buffer the pond from future pollution. It may be that your pond is in a marshy area and you may be better off digging small shallow pools rather than undertaking big excavations. Often it is easier and cheaper to create a new pond than to dredge an existing one. Digging new ponds can be much more useful to wildlife than planting trees - trees will self-seed if land is left alone whereas ponds are much less likely to create themselves. Indeed, very often the most useful way of improving a pond for wildlife is to reduce (or remove) overhanging trees which keep out light and can degrade the pond with heavy leaf-fall. Read more...
