good species in there. cool species in there. that s a really good one. can you see it? a team of young volunteers work with wildlife trust staff to learn about the ecosystem, including this great crested newt. the kids love it, they get so excited whatever they find in the pond. they are just over the moon. these ice age ponds are quite exceptional but all ponds are haven for wildlife say the wildlife trust, so i have decided to do my bit. so the plan is just to put a small pond in this corner of the garden. putting in a pond, however small, is the biggest single thing you can do to boost biodiversity in your garden, the wildlife trust says. even a small pool in a bowl on a windowsill makes a difference. i ve planted mine with some native british pond plants i bought online.
the sunshine. despite the temperatures it will not deal particularly warm compared with what we have been used to. 0vernight some clear skies with a few showers. by the end of the night we will have gusts in the irishjicama roundabout 40, 50 miles gusts in the irishjicama roundabout 40,50 miles an hour. the gusts in the irishjicama roundabout 40, 50 miles an hour. the strongest gas will be in the western isles. in the irish sea, round about 40, 50 miles an hour. the potentialfor saturday and sunday of disrupted wind and rain. i will tell you saturday and sunday of disrupted wind and rain. iwill tell you more in half an hour. we will look forward to it. we often talk about planting trees as a great way to help the environment but creating ponds is also crucial. the wildlife trust says putting one in your garden is the single
special because these words cowered out by ice as it retreated some special because these were scoured out by ice as it retreated some 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age when woolly mammoths roamed britain. in summer, some of these ponds dry out and it is possible to drill down into the peat which can be thousands of years old. so that could be, i mean, you don t know, but that could be 15,000 years old. it could be. which is really exciting. a legacy of the ice age. that s incredible. and you never know, one of these you could accidentally hit your mammoth. the tusk. leg, bit of orange hair, it would be very exciting. we live in hope, there is no reason why not. because these ponds have been around so long, they have an incredible variety of species, including some plants that are normally now only found in the arctic tundra. it is quite magical to be here thinking about the past and the present when you do a pond dip and find really
most important thing you can do to boost biodiversity. 0ur climate editor justin rowlatt has been doing some digging quite literally on this story. actually, the water is really clear, isn t it? we are on a night time safari to one of the most biodiverse and threatened habitats in the uk. there are lots of insects. look at that! we are visiting one of the country s ponds. that is so good! i ve never seen a toad there before. ponds are home to an extraordinary range of plants and animals but it is estimated that 90% of the country s lowland ponds were lost in the 20th century. that is more than 0.5 million ponds gone. and that is why it is essential we protect those we have left. this network of ponds in herefordshire is particularly
i ll admit i did get a bit obsessed by my new pond. i got really teased by the family because i would come and kind of kneel here and look in there for, like, 15 minutes at a time because the longer you look, your eye gets attuned to it and you see more and more. fortunately, catherine is understanding. what you have done here is you have created your own ecosystem, so this is where your plants, your animals, your landscape and your climate will all interact together and what it will do is create a real bubble of life, so it is like your local neighbourhood of wildlife. she says ponds can be an important bulwark against global warming. as our climate changes, we are starting to lose our biodiversity so what we really need to do is work together to create places that wildlife can thrive. so if we can do things like installing a wildlife pond in our garden, this is one of the best ways to bring biodiversity, provide a home for wildlife and help us make the step that we need to make to ta