Water for Wildlife: Pond creation and river restoration at Kingcombe Meadows

At Kingcombe National Nature Reserve, Dorset Wildlife Trust is restoring the River Hooke and creating new ponds to bring life back to this precious chalk stream landscape. From re-meandering the river and adding woody debris dams to digging new ponds for amphibians and dragonflies, the project is helping nature recover while improving water quality flowing into Poole Harbour.

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Kingcombe National Nature Reserve (NNR) is one of the few places in Dorset where traditional lowland meadow and pasture management, and wildlife-rich landscapes remain largely untouched by modern agricultural practices. The River Hooke, a tributary of the River Frome flowing into Poole Harbour, runs through the reserve and is at the heart of ongoing restoration work.

Under the Water Framework Directive, the River Hooke is classified as ‘moderate’ status. A combination of factors contributes to the Hooke not achieving a ‘good’ status, these include:

Diffuse sources of pollution from agriculture and rural land management, poor livestock management and poor nutrient management.
Point sources from water recycling centres.
Hydrological regime – seasonal variations in flow.
Historic pollution contributed to failing its chemical water tests, undertaken by the Environment Agency in 2019, for Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and mercury and compounds.

Like many rivers, the Hooke has been historically modified by humans; altering its flow and creating drainage ditches on floodplains to remove water as quickly as possible from neighbouring land. These interventions have reduced its ability to function naturally, reduced habitat diversity, and contributed to downstream flooding and nutrient enrichment in Poole Harbour, a nitrate sensitive zone.

In partnership with Wessex Water, working with landowners and farm clusters, the 11km long river is now part of a larger project - the Frome Headwaters Chalkstream Flagship Restoration Project. Working together at landscape-scale is vital to create change and maximize benefits for nature. With this fantastic work in mind, we also need to do what we can on our own nature reserves. To enhance ecological processes within the river that runs through Kingcombe NNR, Dorset Wildlife Trust is carrying out a programme of river and pond restoration and new pond creation. The work focuses on reinstating natural hydromorphology, increasing habitat heterogeneity, and reducing the flow of nutrients into Poole Harbour.

Pond creation

Six new ponds have been dug at Kingcombe, creating breeding habitat for amphibians including common frog and smooth, palmate and great crested newt. Dragonflies and damselflies such as the broad-bodied chaser, and emerald damselfly are already utilising the new habitat. Ponds also support marginal vegetation like water mint and marsh marigold, which in turn provide nectar for pollinators. By creating additional ponds in the landscape, they act as steppingstones, stopping populations of newts becoming isolated, enhancing species’ territories and creating valuable foraging habitat for bats and birds.

As part of the Species Survival Fund (SSF) project, we will be creating two new ponds this winter and restoring two existing ponds by clearing encroaching vegetation, mainly willow scrub. The clearance will allow marginal plants such as water forget-me-not to become more established, an important native plant which provides an ideal place for great-crested newts to lay their eggs.

Sunlight will once again be able to reach the surface of the water; it is crucial for the pond's health and vital for frogspawn success. A temperature gradient throughout an open pond warms the shallows for species including tadpoles, with remaining vegetation keeping other areas cooler.

Hannah Divine / Kingcombe pond with marginal plants

Lydia Gill / Brooklands Farm pond restoration

A smooth newt creeps through some short grass

Smooth newt © Philip Precey

John Bridges / Great crested newt

Vaughn Matthews / Broad-bodied chaser

Zsuzsanna Bird / Marsh marigolds

River restoration

Over 1.3km of river runs alongside Kingcombe NNR. Dorset Wildlife Trust’s work on the Hooke has centered on slowing the flow, re-meandering sections, and reconnecting the river with its floodplain. 14 woody debris dams have been introduced to diversify flow patterns, laterally and vertically, by creating shallow riffles, deeper pools, and a much-desired braided channel. It provides microhabitat for riverfly invertebrates and cover for fish species such as brown trout and European eel. Reconnecting floodplains enables the deposition of fine sediments and nutrients where they can be absorbed by vegetation rather than exported downstream.

Jack Perks / Brown Trout

James Burland / River Hooke

Dorset Wildlife Trust

Ecological benefits

The combined effect of these interventions has helped to restore the natural function of the Hooke. Wetland birds such as snipe are returning to foraging in the richer floodplains, while invertebrate diversity will increase within restored ponds and rivers. Cleaner water leaving the River Hooke contributes to reducing nutrient inputs into Poole Harbour, which continues to suffer from eutrophication enhanced by nitrate and phosphate enrichment.

This project demonstrates how river, wetland, and pond restoration can deliver multiple benefits: reversing biodiversity declines, minimise sediment erosion and nutrient pollution, reducing peak flow flooding events, sequestering carbon, and restoring the dynamic ecosystem processes within the upper catchment.