The Fish Orphans Rehoming Scheme

We have a severe problem of lack of resources caused by rehoming pond fishes due partly to people wishing to sell their properties and the prospective buyer saying no to the pond, and partly by new owners buying a property containing a pond they consider a “risk” to their charges and contacting us without also investigating the many alternative ways of securing the pond safely. - and while we definitely do not want to restrict our service to genuine and needy cases we would like to  to point out the following:

    1.    Having young children is no reason for filling in ponds and getting rid of their occupants. Plastic and other types of walk-on grids that go over the pond are easily purchased online or in most aquatic centres and these make the pond completely safe for adults and children and protect the fishes against herons.

2.     All conservationists agree that people should be adding ponds to their gardens and not removing them.

The law itself has recently changed to ensure that the pond owners now have a legal duty of care in regard to the maintenance of their pets including fishes. ( The old law did not include fishes) .

  It is TOTALLY illegal to release fishes into the wild – it is also a good way to murder the fishes, which are tame and easily snapped up by predators .The fine for "dumping" into the wild environment is (hugely) prohibitive!