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New policy directions for global pond conservation

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posted on 2018-05-04, 14:08 authored by Matthew J. Hill, Christopher Hassall, Beat Oertli, Lenore Fahrig, Belinda J. Robson, Jeremy Biggs, Michael J. Samways, Nisikawa Usio, Noriko Takamura, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Paul WoodPaul Wood
© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Despite the existence of well-established international environmental and nature conservation policies (e.g., the Ramsar Convention and Convention on Biological Diversity) ponds are largely missing from national and international legislation and policy frameworks. Ponds are among the most biodiverse and ecologically important freshwater habitats, and their value lies not only in individual ponds, but more importantly, in networks of ponds (pondscapes). Ponds make an important contribution to society through the ecosystem services they provide, with effective conservation of pondscapes essential to ensuring that these services are maintained. Implementation of current pond conservation through individual site designations does not function at the landscape scale, where ponds contribute most to biodiversity. Conservation and management of pondscapes should complement current national and international nature conservation and water policy/legislation, as pondscapes can provide species protection in landscapes where large-scale traditional conservation areas cannot be established (e.g., urban or agricultural landscapes). We propose practical steps for the effective incorporation or enhancement of ponds within five policy areas: through open water sustainable urban drainage systems in urban planning, increased incentives in agrienvironment schemes, curriculum inclusion in education, emphasis on ecological scale in mitigation measures following anthropogenic developments, and the inclusion of pondscapes in conservation policy.

Funding

CH was supported by a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Program. MJS was supported by the NRF (South Africa) and Mondi Group.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Conservation Letters

Citation

HILL, M.J. ... et al. 2018. New policy directions for global pond conservation. Conservation Letters, 11(5): e12447.

Publisher

© the Authors. Published by Wiley

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-02-22

Publication date

2018

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Wiley under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

eISSN

1755-263X