The corner of a field can sometimes look unremarkable until we ask what happens to the water.
Where does it collect after rain? How quickly does it leave? Could a shallow depression become useful habitat? And might holding water here, in the right place, have benefits further down the catchment?
These are among the questions behind a new wetlands programme in Nidderdale, where ecologist David Higgins has joined the National Landscape team as delivery officer for wetlands. His appointment brings more than a decade of experience in river restoration, natural flood management and peatland science back to a landscape he first encountered early in his career.
It's also bringing an invitation to the people who manage it: come forward with an idea.
Higgins is set to work with farmers, landowners and estates on projects ranging from pond restoration and creation to shallow wetland scrapes and potentially larger schemes. Alongside that work, he'll collaborate with Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust on rivers and Yorkshire Peat Partnership on the moors.
The scope is important. A pond, a beck and an upland bog have different characteristics and need different approaches. Taken together, however, they invite us to consider Nidderdale through the movement of water across it - and the decisions that shape that movement.
Higgins began his ecology career with Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust, based at Bainbridge in Wensleydale. His early projects took him to Darley Beck, the River Laver and the Ripon area.
“It’s kind of a full loop,” he says in the announcement of his appointment. “It’ll be fantastic to go back to the old places I worked on: Darley Beck, the Laver and around the Ripon area.”
There'll be unfamiliar ground, too. He's already been visiting sites and meeting people across the National Landscape, starting the conversations from which practical projects might emerge.
Between his Yorkshire roles, his work has taken him considerably further afield. Three and a half years in the Falkland Islands involved helping to characterise peatlands: mapping soils, carbon, moisture and associated wildlife. Some fieldwork required seven-to-ten-day trips aboard a yacht to reach remote locations.
More recently, he spent two years with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust on rural run-off and natural flood management. There, measures including leaky dams, scrapes and detention ponds were used to slow surface water before it reached villages at risk of flooding.
The move back north brings familiar principles into different terrain.
“The principles are very similar,” he says. “It’s just steeper here.”
His observation contains an essential qualification. Restoration depends on understanding the particular place: its slopes, soils, watercourses and existing habitats, alongside the people who use and manage it.
The wider climatic context gives this work urgency. Met Office projections indicate a general movement towards wetter UK winters and drier summers, with heavier summer downpours. Individual years will continue to vary, but the longer-term challenge involves both periods of water scarcity and episodes of intense rainfall.
For land managers, those pressures can arrive within the same year. Thinking about water means considering how a landscape behaves through changing conditions, rather than designing solely around one storm or one dry spell.
“We need to hold more water on the land because of the changing climate,” Higgins says.
Natural flood management seeks to restore or imitate processes that can slow, store or redirect water through a catchment. The Environment Agency’s updated evidence directory, published in February 2025, drew on more than 700 scientific papers covering 17 types of measure. It found growing evidence that these approaches can reduce flood risk and bring wider environmental benefits.
The practical detail remains crucial. A feature’s contribution depends on its location, design, available storage and relationship with the wider catchment. The agency’s evidence on run-off management highlights the value of networks of measures distributed across a landscape.
That's a useful starting point for understanding Nidderdale’s programme. Individual projects need to make sense on the ground where they are built, while contributing to an understanding of what happens beyond the field boundary.
Wetlands also deserve attention as habitats in their own right.
“A huge amount of our biodiversity is associated with wetlands, or with that transition between wetland and dry land,” Higgins says.
His invitation includes landowners interested in wading birds, and those with field corners that contribute relatively little to agricultural production but might offer opportunities for wetland creation.
The ecological outcome will obviously depend on the site. Water depth, seasonal changes, vegetation and management all influence what can live there. Good restoration begins with those conditions and a clear idea of what a project's intended to achieve.
The carbon story needs similar care. Peatlands hold carbon accumulated over long periods; when peat dries and becomes exposed to oxygen, it can release carbon dioxide. Restoring suitable wet conditions helps protect that store.
Creating a pond elsewhere is a different intervention. Yorkshire Peat Partnership’s own research discussions show that even within peatland restoration, pools and changing water conditions can affect greenhouse-gas exchanges in complicated ways.
The strongest case for restoration comes from understanding those differences. Habitat, water management and carbon benefits should be assessed in relation to the particular project.
For farmers and landowners, an environmental proposal has to fit the practical demands of managing a holding.
A potential wetland raises questions about grazing, access, maintenance, costs and the use of neighbouring ground. An attractive idea needs a workable agreement about what happens after the initial excavation or restoration work.
The Nidderdale announcement recognises the importance of making that process easier to navigate. Higgins will act as a single point of contact, coordinating with colleagues across the National Landscape team.
“We can do the liaison between us rather than sending a farmer or landowner from one member of staff to another,” he says. “We’ll sort that out ourselves and try to make the process as straightforward as possible.”
That commitment could prove significant. Turning interest into action takes time, and a land manager may reasonably struggle to identify which organisation, adviser or funding route to approach first.
The latest news identifies several possible sources of support, including core project funding and farm environment schemes. Funding remains something to explore for each proposal, rather than an automatic entitlement.
As National Landscape manager Iain Mann puts it, the aim is to develop something that works “for the landowner, the land as well as the wider landscape”.
The next chapter is going to be written through the projects themselves.
Useful questions will include where work takes place, what habitats it aims to support, how changes in water are monitored and who takes responsibility for maintaining each site. Following those questions over time would tell us more than a count of ponds created or hectares brought into a programme.
Higgins’s appointment is the beginning of that process. The announcement sets out an ambition and asks people to bring forward possibilities; the eventual results will depend on the sites, partnerships and resources that follow.
For Nidderdale, there's something compelling about beginning at this scale: a conversation beside a beck, an existing pond needing attention, a field corner whose possibilities deserve another look.
A landscape’s capacity to adapt is shaped through a number of interlocking decisions. Making room for water starts with understanding where it can belong - and working with the people who know the ground.
Have a potential wetland project? Farmers, landowners and residents can contact David Higgins at David.Higgins@northyorks.gov.uk or 01423 712950 to discuss ideas.
