THE ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION VALUE OF FORESTRY PONDS IN SCOTLAND, UNITED-KINGDOM

A survey of 42 natural and artificially created ponds in forest habitat in Scotland was carried out in 1989. Pond habitat, physiochemical variables, animal and plant communities, together with management successes and problems, were studied. Most ponds supported diverse communities, typical of small waterbodies. A total of 29 ponds (69%) suffered problems, the most frequent being infilling and overgrowing (eight ponds, 19%) and acidification (eight ponds, 19%), only the eight infilled ponds being severely degraded. Pond creation and restoration by the Forestry Commission generally provided valuable additional habitat in plantations and should be encouraged. Creation and maintenance work fit naturally into the rotational pattern of plantation management. The data, combined with a review of pond literature, were used to build a simple model of the relative importance of environmental factors in shaping pond communities.