In praise of the humble pond

This old pond has nothing much to recommend it at first sight. The edges are indeterminate and it's easy to sink in over welly level. A mass of reeds has taken over one end leaving a relatively small area of open water. The other side is overgrown with brambles and goat willow scrub. But today there was a pair of mallards scouting for a nesting site (the drake's green head is visible behind the reed mace head); I spotted a fresh lump of frog spawn (my first this year); badger paths wound through the briars and in the corner of the field a fox's skull grinned up at me. As well as being a habitat for a variety of birds, amphibians and invertebrates a pond is a magnet for their predators too.
But it's much more than that. The current flood catastrophe in many parts of Britain is revealing what damage has been done by abandoning traditional farming practices. By allowing ponds, meres, ditches and watercourses to become choked up through neglect, or by deliberately obliterating them, by draining swamps and marshes, and by removing hedges, copses, thickets and scrub, all in the interests of convenience and land management for large-scale grazing and arable, the result has been less absorption and containment of water. These features that would once have held water or slowed its passage have vanished leaving bare surfaces for it to run off taking with it the minerals and organic matter that render the land fertile.

George Monbiot's article and video today reveals the ominous effects of the uncontrolled ploughing in order to grow maize and biofuels, but the smaller scale changes like the loss of ponds has also contributed to the disaster in the context of a changing climate.

Meanwhile this humble little pond continues to do its job, holding water and hosting wildlife. Long may it continue - but how long I can't say. Many others like it have gone.