General Information:
This ‘double ended cart pond’ is probably the largest pond in the project. It is situated close to Cliff Road within the Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Black Rock Reserve at OS Grid reference ST48554 53596.
This is a pond from which we have records of great crested newts, therefore no work was undertaken until the autumn of 2017 when the newt breeding season had finished. There was an enormous amount of silt in the pond, too much to realistically remove by hand so a digger was bought in with limited success. The digger was able to remove rocks, roots and other solid detritus, but the silt proved too fluid so a slurry pump and tanker was tried. This wasn’t terribly successful as the silt was full of stone fragments which kept blocking the pipe, so in the end it came down to removal by hand! A dozen great crested newts were found and relocated from the pond during the removal of the silt.
