The Great London Pond Project
Funding overview
- Organisation name: Zoological Society of London
- Project name: The Great London Pond Project
- Rewild London grant awarded: £32,870
- Total project cost: £44,395
- Area: London-wide
- Project aim: To restore and increase the number of vital pond habitats for London
About the project
This citizen science project mapped and assessed the condition of ponds across London, with the aim that the data collected would help understand where priority ponds are and how they can be improved.
Priority ponds are those which have a particularly high conservation value, usually because they support important freshwater species or rare species. They are surveyed by collecting data on land use, location, plant cover and shading. This information is then used to predict if a pond would likely be a priority pond on inspection of the plants and animal biodiversity.
Over the course of the project (April – September) 100 volunteers were trained on how to survey the ponds and some had further training to measure the water quality.
Impact on London's environment
At the start of the project, GiGL provided their dataset on publicly accessible standing waterbodies in London, of which their map showed 2745 data points where it was thought there could be ponds, with data taken from a range of timeframes and projects.
Throughout the project volunteers processed 1173 data points out of the original 2745. Most were processed by on the ground volunteer or staff surveys, with a small number of points also processed by using Google Satellite imagery to determine that they would either be inaccessible (e.g. golf courses, schools), or not ponds at all (e.g. points that were in the Thames, docks, sewage works).
Of the 1173 points processed, 428 (36%) of the ponds were confirmed to be ponds. In addition, 150 new ponds were mapped which were not included in the original GiGL dataset. Overall, 102 ponds were found to be priority ponds across London which can now be managed for the future.
Key learnings
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The next step of the project will be to forge new partnerships with landowners and community groups to start restoring ponds that this initial survey shows are disappearing from our cityscape.
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The use of volunteers has been vital to understanding London’s waterbodies as without them, the surveys would have taken a lot longer to carry out.
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These habitats are too important to let go, and their restoration will be an important part of a wider nature recovery plan for London.
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