By taking part in our Local Pond Survey, you can help us to find out
- where ponds are
- how many ponds there are in the UK
- what they are like
- and the types of wildlife that live in ponds.
We are interested ponds of all shapes, sizes or origins; they can be man-made or natural; they can be formal or informal and located in the countryside or in your garden.
If you have a local pond then you may be interested in making the most of the pond for wildlife, but before you start doing anything you need to know what is in it. The Local Pond Survey is a good way to do this.
For the purpose of this survey, a pond is a body of water between one metre squared and two hectares (about 5 acres) which holds water for four months of the year or more.
The Local Pond Survey is based on the Predictive SYstem for Multimetrics PSYM method (pronounced 'sim'), which compares the plant species, invertebrate families and a range of physical characteristics to those of top-notch ponds and tells you how good a match it is. Ponds that score over 75% are amongst the best ponds in the country.
Take part in the Local Pond Survey
Download the full Local Pond Survey pack pdf (13 pages) which has guidelines and the survey forms.
If you need extra forms, you can download additional ones here:
Local Pond Survey form word doc (English version)
Local Pond Survey form word doc (Welsh version).
See our advice section to learn more about the wildlife in your pond.
Thanks for taking part in our survey. The information will be put into the National Pond Monitoring Network database.
