WBD1Manage ponds

What it actually is

You are paid per pond to keep the farm's ponds as decent wildlife habitat. GOV.UK's stated aim is ponds with clear and clean water, semi-aquatic vegetation around the edges, and submerged and floating plants, providing habitat for native aquatic species. The doing side is light: control scrub around the pond edge by lightly cutting it or grazing, and keep livestock from trampling the edges in a way that clouds the water. The not-doing side is longer: no deepening or altering of the pond's profile, no introducing plants, animals or fish, no supplementary feeding of fish, no feeding waterfowl, and no dyes in the water.

Source: GOV.UK, WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

What it pays, and what that comes to

The rate is in the panel at the top of this page, paid per pond, for up to three ponds per hectare. Multiplied out:

Source: arithmetic on the payment rate shown at the top of this page, which comes from Tilth's copy of the GOV.UK action catalogue and carries its own last-checked date. The pond counts are illustrations.

Is it worth it on your ground?

Step one: what it costs to put in. Nothing is bought or established. A pond has no gross margin to give up, so nothing is displaced.

Step two: what it asks of you. A light cut or graze of the edge scrub, some thought about where stock drink, and the discipline of leaving the pond otherwise alone for three years. For a pond that gets an occasional flail and no other attention, that is close to what already happens. For a pond you were planning to dredge, deepen or restock, it is a real restriction, and the next section explains why that particular restriction is worth understanding before you enter.

Step three: where that leaves it. Per pond, per year, for work measured in hours rather than days, the payment is respectable, and a farm with several eligible ponds is being paid meaningful money for restraint. The catch is not the money, it is that the pond is then committed for three years.

Source: the payment rate at the top of this page; the requirements from GOV.UK, WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026. The judgements in steps two and three are Tilth's own reading rather than scheme guidance.

Does it work, and what makes it work better

This section is what we have found in published sources about the practices around this action. It is not scheme guidance, it is not Defra's or the RPA's view, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out. We have named every source and given the date we checked it. What it means for your ground is your decision.

None of the work below is about WBD1 by name. The published evidence on farm ponds is mostly about amphibians, and it is assessed in Conservation Evidence's Amphibian Conservation synopsis, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, where independent subject experts score each assessed action. Ponds as habitat are well evidenced there: creating ponds for amphibians is in their top category, Beneficial, on 30 studies, with an effectiveness score of 80 per cent. That is evidence about creating ponds rather than managing them, but it says the thing this action looks after is worth looking after.

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 869, Create ponds for amphibians, checked 23/08/2026. Cite as Smith, Meredith and Sutherland (2020), Amphibian Conservation, pages 9 to 64 in What Works in Conservation 2020, Open Book Publishers.

The awkward finding, stated plainly. The strongest-scoring management intervention in that synopsis is deepening, de-silting or re-profiling ponds: category Beneficial, on 9 studies, scored 71 per cent for effectiveness, 65 per cent for certainty and 0 for harms, with before-and-after studies in France, Denmark and the UK finding deepening and re-profiling established or increased populations of great crested newts, common frogs and tree frogs. WBD1 prohibits deepening and altering the pond's profile. We are not going to pretend those two facts point the same way. What we can say is what each is for: the studies measured interventions on ponds that had silted up or degraded, and the action manages ponds as standing habitat and stops them being engineered mid-agreement. Both can be true, and which applies to your pond depends on the state it is in now, which is a judgement this page cannot make for you.

Source: Conservation Evidence, action 817, Deepen, de-silt or re-profile ponds, key messages and scores, checked 23/08/2026. The prohibition, GOV.UK, WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

The rest of the evidence, both ways. Restoring ponds sits one category down, Likely to be beneficial, on 15 studies, scored 60 per cent effectiveness and 63 per cent certainty: six replicated before-and-after studies across Denmark, Estonia, Italy and the UK found restoration increased amphibian species numbers, populations or breeding occupancy, while a UK controlled study found no increase in great crested newt populations and a UK systematic review found no conclusive evidence that mitigation including pond restoration produced self-sustaining newt populations. Removing or controlling fish by drying ponds out is Beneficial, on 5 studies, scored 80 per cent effectiveness, 66 per cent certainty and 3 per cent harms, which runs the same direction as this action's rules against introducing fish and feeding them, though the action does not ask for drying. And removing tree canopy to reduce pond shading, the assessed practice nearest to this action's scrub control, is in the category Unknown effectiveness on just 2 studies, scored 30 per cent effectiveness and 25 per cent certainty: one Danish study found translocated toads established after restoration that included canopy removal, and one American study found canopy removal did not increase salamander hatching success.

Source: Conservation Evidence, actions 878, 826 and 758, key messages and scores, checked 23/08/2026.

Conservation Evidence say themselves that studies are not directly comparable or of equal value, and that study size, design, reported metrics and relevance to your own situation matter more than "simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation". Nearly all of this work is about amphibians; the action's aim also names water quality and native aquatic species beyond amphibians, where we have not found equivalent assessed evidence.

Source: Conservation Evidence, the note under key messages on the action pages cited above, checked 23/08/2026.

What you actually have to do

Manage each entered pond to achieve the aim: clear and clean water, semi-aquatic vegetation around the edges, submerged and floating plants. That includes controlling scrub around the pond edge by lightly cutting it or grazing it, and managing livestock access so trampling does not cloud the water. The action runs continuously through the three years from the start date.

Source: GOV.UK, WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

What you cannot do on it

Do not deepen the pond or alter its profile. Do not artificially introduce plants, animals or fish. Do not allow supplementary feeding of fish. Do not feed waterfowl. Do not add dyes to the water.

Source: GOV.UK, WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

Where it can go

Ponds between 25 square metres and 2 hectares, under your complete management control, edge and water both, registered with pond land cover and the WF03 land use code. Paid for up to three ponds per hectare. Not eligible: wastewater discharge ponds, sediment ponds, balancing ponds, synthetically lined ponds, irrigation and fire water ponds, and aquaculture ponds. It is static: the same ponds for all three years.

Source: GOV.UK, WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026.

What you can stack it with

Nothing on the same area: the GOV.UK page allows no other SFI revenue actions, Countryside Stewardship options or Environmental Stewardship options on the pond itself. The land around the pond is another matter, and the buffer and margin actions on this site are how the surroundings earn their keep.

Source: combinations, GOV.UK WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026. The last sentence is Tilth's own reading rather than scheme guidance.

Things worth watching

This section is Tilth's own reading of where this action is easy to get wrong. It is not scheme guidance, it is not sourced from Defra or the RPA, and none of it adds a requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

Enter the pond as it is, not the pond you meant to improve. The profile prohibition means any dredging, deepening or re-shaping you have been meaning to do cannot happen during the agreement. A pond that needs that work is arguably better entered after the work than before it, and the evidence section above is the reason the question deserves real thought rather than a shrug.

The registration is a prerequisite, not a formality. Eligibility runs through the pond being registered with pond land cover and the WF03 land use code. A pond that has never been mapped as a pond has paperwork to do before it has an application to be in.

Complete control means the whole pond. Edge and water both, for three years. A boundary pond shared with a neighbour fails the test in the same way a shared ditch fails WBD2's.

The fishing syndicate question. No introduced fish and no supplementary feeding of fish sits awkwardly with a pond that is quietly run as a fishery. If a pond has ever been stocked, what lives in it now is worth knowing before the form is filled in.

Waterfowl feeding includes the ornamental kind. Feeding ducks is a prohibition on the page. On a pond near the farmhouse, everyone who lives there is now part of the compliance picture.

Three ponds per hectare is a cap, not a target. The per-pond payment tempts a count of everything that holds water. The size floor of 25 square metres, the eligibility exclusions and the cap all trim that count, and the honest number is the one to apply with.

Keeping the evidence

Also Tilth's own reading. GOV.UK sets the requirements; what follows is a practical suggestion about record keeping.

GOV.UK asks for records of pond management operations with invoices, photographs and documentation showing the aim is being met. For an action this quiet, dated photographs are the backbone: the same viewpoint of each pond a few times a year shows the water, the edge vegetation and the scrub all at once. A line in the diary for each cut or graze of the edges completes it.

Source: evidence requirements, GOV.UK, WBD1 action page, checked 23/08/2026. The suggestion is Tilth's own.

The part only your own ground can answer

Whether your pond is habitat worth holding steady or a silted bowl that needs work first is the whole decision, and it is one you make at the pond edge, not on this page. Either way the record starts with knowing what you have: where the ponds are, how big, and what state they are in. Tilth's map holds the ponds alongside the fields, with the photographs pinned to the spot they were taken. Request an invite.