THREATENED ponds across East Lancashire are being restored thanks to a five-figure grant.

Three ponds, in Cliviger, near Burnley, Nelson and Oswaldtwistle are to benefit from a cash boost to help carry out work - from building viewing platforms to repairing pathways.

Nature group the Ponds Conservation Trust is using the £51,000 grant from Biffa Waste Services to restore 13 ponds across the North West.

Local groups have pitched in to help boost the grant, and the hope is that once the ponds are finished, nature will be protected and local people will be able to use them.

Nicky Wilkins, the Trust's North West community ponds officer, said: "Ponds have a high level of diversity of both plants and animals. In terms of preserving different species, they are good investments."

Despite lakes being in the public eye more often, ponds have a range of nature living within them that can often be found nowhere else.

Nicky said: "You get a great range of ponds with species that are specialised to them. Ponds can also be seasonal. You get ponds that dry out, and people think there is nothing at all that exists in them, but there is a lot of specialised species that are adapted to exist in them."

In East Lancashire, Cliviger Fish Pond; Greenfields Nature Area, in Nelson; and Foxhill Bank Nature Reserve, in Oswaldtwistle; are to benefit from the cash, as part of a national project called Ponds for People.

Cliviger Fish Pond leaks, so the water level will be made more constant, paths will be created, and silt will be improved. Greenfields also has a water level problem which will be fixed, and community access will be improved.

Foxhill Bank will get a viewing platform, water quality will be improved, and bank erosion will be stopped.

The money, known as a Biffaward, comes mainly from landfill tax collected by Biffa. But according to law, only 90 per cent of any grant can come from this source, so local groups have pitched in.

In East Lancashire, Pendle Borough Council and Todmorden Angling Society have helped.

Martin Bettington, chairman of Biffaward, said: "Ponds for People is an excellent way of involving communities with their local environment. The project will enable people to learn about and improve local biodiversity, as well as provide public access to sites that otherwise would have been destroyed."

Pond facts:

Estimates say that between half and three-quarters of Britain's ponds have been lost over the last hundred years, with development, pollution and mismanagement threatening many of those surviving

It isn't just plants and animals that live in ponds. Along with ducks and frogs, look with a microscope and you will see dozens of types of algae and bacteria

Your local pond could contain examples of almost every major group of animals on earth

Ponds are often the habitat of several protected species, including the great crested newt and water vole.