Shaun Hancox, a man who has earned the dubious honor of being called "the Picasso of ponds," is currently turning a boggy field in Somerset into something that looks more like a construction site than a masterpiece. His orange and black excavator rhythmically scoops lumpy clay soil, sculpting it into brown banks that resemble a scar on the green pasture. But fear not - the magic happens when rain fills these depressions, and life explodes faster than a politician's promise.
Britain has lost at least 400,000 ponds over the past century, according to the Freshwater Habitats Trust, leaving the remaining ones overgrown, degraded, or nutrient-polluted. "Everyone realizes we're in a sorry state with freshwater," says Hancox, of Creative Wetlands, who has dug scores of new ponds for charities and rewilding projects across Britain. His previous gig? Shaping golf courses, landfill sites, and drainage systems - basically everything that wasn't good for wildlife. "I've always had a massive interest in wildlife, so we've got to the stage now where we want to put something back," he explains, as if apologizing for his past life as a golf course shaper in Portugal, Germany, and Belgium.
Building golf courses taught Hancox the art of pond creation. "A golf ball rolls very much how water moves," he says, revealing a surprisingly profound insight. He now applies that logic to wildlife ponds, sculpting them like bunkers but in a more rustic, natural way. At Heal Somerset, a 185-hectare (460 acre) former dairy farm being rewilded by the charity Heal Rewilding, Hancox is digging four new ponds, including a double-bowled one 30 meters in diameter, specifically for great-crested newts. These newts have been found in low numbers on the farm but had no suitable ponds to breed in - until now.
Crucially, these ponds aren't connected to any river system, which could wash nutrient-rich or polluted water into them. Instead, they rely on clean rainwater or groundwater, allowing delicate aquatic plants to thrive. Pete Case, of the Newt Conservation Partnership, notes: "You can fiddle with rivers all you like, but pond creation is the simplest and cheapest way of bringing clean water back to the landscape." The partnership, funded by the NatureSpace partnership where housebuilders pay to create replacement habitat, ensures each pond is maintained for 25 years with annual inspections and payments to landowners.
Hancox's technique is as intricate as a Russian doll: a pond within a pond within a pond. This design ensures that as water dries in summer, aquatic life can retreat to the deepest part, avoiding isolated pools where they'd perish. He uses a laser level for precision but also deploys dowsing rods - metal rods held outstretched that supposedly point inward when subterranean water is detected - to locate and block old field drains. Jan Stannard, CEO of Heal Rewilding, calls his ponds "the massive equivalent of a pig rootle," noting that even their Tamworth pigs can't match his scale.
Ponds and wetlands are inspiring volunteers at Heal, with Stannard calling them "a gateway for people into habitat restoration." Hancox, reflecting on his career shift from golf courses to wildlife havens, says: "It's so satisfying, especially coming back and seeing how everything is working - the dragonflies, the toads, the birdlife, snipe - it just comes in so quickly. You couldn't have a better job."