From research to recovery: how our monitoring programme is guiding freshwater conservation
20th October 2026
As Freshwater Habitats Trust completes its biggest ever season of freshwater surveys, Technical Director Dr Naomi Ewald explains how almost four decades of research is helping us understand the state of freshwater biodiversity – and carry out practical conservation work to restore it.
2026 has been our biggest year so far for monitoring freshwater habitats and species. So far this year, we’ve surveyed nearly 2,000 ponds, as well as carrying out monitoring work in other habitats, such as fens, streams and ditches. It’s a huge operation, involving visiting sites up and down the country – something that is only possible thanks to a dedicated team of surveyors and the support of hundreds of landowners. So, why do we do it?
Freshwater Habitats Trust is an evidence-led organisation. That means we don’t just want to assume that our approach to freshwater conservation will work: we need the evidence.
Broadly speaking, our research and monitoring helps us answer three questions: why is the Freshwater Network needed, what will work to build it, and are we achieving our ultimate goal of reversing the decline in freshwater biodiversity?
One of the measures of success we have set for the Freshwater Network is to demonstrate an increase in freshwater biodiversity that is currently not adequately monitored. If we believe that building the Freshwater Network will reverse the decline in freshwater biodiversity, we need to be able to test that.
And this is badly needed because much of the freshwater environment has historically been poorly monitored.
- PondNet eDNA Survey
Monitoring small waters
Small waters, such as ponds, headwater streams, springs and flushes, have been overlooked for decades, both in freshwater policy and in national monitoring programmes. Developing robust ways to survey them has been an important focus of our research.
Nearly 40 years ago, we started a pioneering monitoring programme. At a time when most scientists and policymakers were only focused on large rivers and lakes, we began to develop methods for monitoring ponds.
One of our early breakthroughs was the development of PSYM (the Predictive System for Multimetrics) with the Environment Agency. Before this work began in the 1990s, there was no standardised way of assessing the ecological quality of ponds comparable to the approaches being used for rivers. By using PSYM to survey wetland plants and aquatic invertebrates, alongside environmental characteristics, we can assess the ecological quality of a pond against a national reference set of high-quality ponds.
More recently, eDNA (environmental DNA) has opened up new possibilities. In 2013, we worked with partners to test whether eDNA could be used to detect Great Crested Newts from the tiny traces of DNA they leave behind in pond water. The resulting methodology has made it possible to survey many more ponds than would have been feasible using traditional techniques alone.
We subsequently established the PondNet eDNA surveys for Great Crested Newt and have now built up more than a decade of national monitoring data. Long-term datasets like this are enormously valuable because individual years can fluctuate. It is only by returning to the same places, using consistent methods, that we can begin to distinguish fluctuations demonstrating longer-term change.
PondNet not only gives us vital data on the status of Great Crested Newts, it also helps us to understand the state of the network of ponds on which they depend.
- Great Crested Newt (Alamy - Jack Perks)
New technology, new opportunities
We are now exploring what the next generation of eDNA techniques might tell us.
Working with Natural England, we are investigating the potential of detecting eDNA from multiple species using a process called metabarcoding. Instead of testing a water sample for one species, this process can potentially detect DNA from many different groups of organisms at once.
This is exciting because some parts of freshwater biodiversity are extremely difficult to monitor at scale. We have good established methods for surveying groups such as wetland plants, but organisms such as algae and bacteria are much harder to incorporate into large monitoring programmes.
eDNA metabarcoding could potentially give us new ways of assessing freshwater condition using these under-recorded groups. Our research will help us to understand what it can reliably tell us, where its limitations lie, and how it complements established methods.
From individual waterbodies to whole landscapes
Another important development is changing the scale at which we monitor freshwater biodiversity.
Freshwaters don’t exist in isolation. Ponds, streams, ditches, wetlands and lakes form interconnected networks across landscapes, and species move between them. If we only monitor individual waterbodies or a single habitat type, we miss a large part of that picture.
Our long-running Water Friendly Farming research project has been particularly important here. Working at a landscape scale, we’ve monitored biodiversity across ponds, streams and ditches alongside water quality and hydrology. This has helped us to develop ways of measuring freshwater biodiversity across an entire landscape rather than looking at each type of waterbody separately.
- Hannah Worker (Programme Manager, Freshwater Habitats Trust) at one of the ponds from the Pitsford project
We have applied that thinking through our work at Pitsford in Northamptonshire, and we are now taking another significant step through Headstart. By establishing a baseline and monitoring change as restoration progresses, we can test whether restoring networks of freshwater habitats can drive biodiversity recovery across whole landscapes.
Evidence-based freshwater conservation
The real value of monitoring lies in what we do with the evidence. We are interested in monitoring freshwater habitats and in what is happening to the rare and threatened species that depend on them.
Our species recovery work is a good example of this. Before we can help a threatened species, we need to understand its current distribution and the condition of the habitats on which it depends. Monitoring can then help us learn more about its ecology, to target the right conservation measures and then find out whether those measures have succeeded.
For the Newt Conservation Partnership, cumulative annual monitoring data is providing strong evidence that a strategic approach to creating networks of clean water ponds is delivering for Great Crested Newts. Survey data also demonstrates benefits beyond the target species and helps us to identify opportunities where creating or restoring habitat can provide the greatest results for freshwater biodiversity recovery.
This is also why our partnerships with universities and other research organisations are so important. Academic research can help us to answer fundamental questions about how freshwater ecosystems work, while our role allows us to take those findings and test and apply them in real landscapes.
This combination is one of Freshwater Habitats Trust’s strengths. We are interested in research because we want to use it.
- Newt Conservation Partnership pond creation in action
Finding the best freshwaters
Monitoring is also important for another core principle of the Freshwater Network: protect the best. We can’t protect our most important freshwater habitats if we don’t know where they are.
Over the coming years, this will be a major focus for us. Working with Natural England, we are developing national resources for two important small-water Priority Habitats: Priority Ponds and Priority Headwater Streams. We want people to help us find these special places and put them on the map.
That could be a local authority wanting to understand the most valuable freshwater habitats in its area, a landowner interested in what is present on their land, a catchment partnership developing a restoration plan or a community group exploring its local freshwater environment.
If we can find the places that are already supporting high-quality freshwater biodiversity, then we can make sure they are protected and use them as the foundations from which recovery can spread.
Some of the methods we have developed deliberately make this easier. Our Clean Water Kits, for example, allow people without specialist ecological expertise to identify low-nutrient water.
A huge collaborative effort
None of our monitoring work happens in isolation. This year alone, hundreds of landowners have allowed our surveyors onto their land. That is a huge logistical exercise before anybody even takes a water sample or records a plant.
We are enormously grateful to the farmers, private landowners, local authorities and major landowning organisations that give us access. National monitoring depends on understanding freshwaters in the wider countryside, whether that is farmland, nature reserves or other designated sites.
It also depends on expertise. Over the past few years, we have significantly expanded the technical capacity within Freshwater Habitats Trust, bringing together specialists in freshwater plants, invertebrates, data and other areas, while continuing to work with an invaluable network of independent experts, universities, partner organisations and volunteers. That collective effort allows us to undertake monitoring at a scale that would otherwise be impossible.
- Carrying out PondNet eDNA survey for Great Crested Newt.
Towards a national monitoring network
Ultimately, we want to reach the point where the whole freshwater environment is adequately monitored. We can’t do that alone, and it will require us to continue building partnerships with government agencies, researchers, environmental organisations, landowners, recording groups and volunteers.
It also requires change in the way our freshwaters are monitored nationally. Small waters are still largely excluded from statutory monitoring. That’s why we are calling for ponds, headwater streams and other small waters to be properly incorporated into the Water Framework Directive, the overarching legislation which underpins monitoring and management of the water environment.
If we are serious about reversing the decline in freshwater biodiversity, we need to be able to measure what is happening to freshwater habitats and species across whole landscapes. For the Freshwater Network, that is the real test: can we protect the best habitats, restore clean water and create new freshwater habitats – and then demonstrate that freshwater biodiversity is recovering as a result?