Another Shortened Week

May 11, 2009

The week was shortened again for me as I took two days off to move house. This should reduce my Carbon foot print. I have moved from Brockhall Village into Clitheroe, reducing significantly the amount of CO2 I produce from my vehicle. This will be further reduced as being so close to the office I plan to cycle in (this should also help to lose a few of those extra pounds I carry!). I’m sure you are all sick to death of Climate change, and it seems to be non-stop in the media (well less so with the Credit crunch), however it does pose various significant impacts to Rivers and Fisheries. The predicted less rainfall, warmer temperatures and extreme weather events will really hurt our rivers and stream. So I like too think if we all do a little – it can reduce these impacts. The trust now takes into account Climate Change in it’s schemes, “carbon off setting” from our tree planting, but also targeted tree planting, making sure we offer suitable shade to help stabilise water temperatures. Before I bore you with any more talk of Climate change I’ll stop!

Monday last week was the usual, check in with Philip and sorting correspondence. One interesting bit of correspondence was with Richard Cove, who is the Scientific Officer for the Grayling Society. There has been much talk recently about poor grayling catches this winter gone, so he and I have been discussing what can be done. One thing that is really important is that grayling anglers help by filling in a grayling “log book”, it’s essentially a catch return that helps us to find out where and what the problems are. I will put more details of this on our website shortly.
We also paid a visit to Mearly Brook and Primrose lodge after more reports of problems. Nothing out of the ordinary was obvious. Primrose lodge did look very low, considering the rain that had been had the week before. Mearly does has the odd salmon and sea trout enter for spawning, and if we can improve the water quality this could be significantly increased.

Tuesday we contacted some contractors about a fish rescue we had been helping with. This will help to protect the fish, but also to generate income for the trust. Unfortunately no real news, but it is still early.
We also have no made a decision to move forward with the Website. We would like to thank Webfettlers for all there hard work and excellent service to date. We would highly recommend them to anybody looking for a website for a small to medium business in the Ribble Valley. We have now expanded the requirement and content for our website and so have had to work with a larger organisation. We hope the new site will be up and running by next week. My Blog will be hosted there, from then on, but I will put links from here to it. We will also have gallery’s of photos and videos, invertebrate survey information, fisheries survey info, a forum, details for projects and information for all river’s users. This is a large step forward for the trust and we hope it will help to attract new members as people are able to see more of what we do and how it benefits all parties who use the river, from anglers to photographers!
Tuesday we also managed to get round the Trout in the Town schools. All are doing very well, with swim up fry in all tanks. They have now bought automatic feeders to cover the Easter holiday, and we hope for a release day in mid May. The highlight of the day was the two headed, YES TWO HEADED, fry at Pendle Junior School! The fry was unable to survive and was removed.

On Wednesday we visited the location of the closed footpath at Brungerly park. There are plans to remove significant numbers of trees here to protect the footpath. We can see the problem, however fear that the removal of trees will impact fish populations, but in the long term increase erosion that will threaten the footpath once more. In the afternoon we did a site visit to check the location for a re-introduction of trout. It is an isolated beck, that can not be accessed by trout from down stream, whose population of trout has been previously wiped out. We will be collecting fry from lower down on the sub-catchment (where there is sufficient fry to do so), and moving them above the barrier to migration. The water quality was excellent, and habitat more than suitable. When the day comes I will be asking for volunteers to help with this, so watch out for the email!

I sent out my first trust member email last week, and I hope that if you are a member and did not receive it that you will email me your details soon so that I can include you in the next one.

This will be a busy week, plenty of meetings about: Signal Crayfish, escapee rainbows, pollution to name just a few!

Posted by Charles Edward Poate | Filed Under Education, General News, Inhabitants of the River, Restoration and Conservation Projects, Threats to the River, WFD 

Comments

No Comments Yet.

Got something to say?





Recent blog posts

RCCT Angling Passport Scheme

Visit the link below to get details on our angling passport scheme, including where we have water, how to buy tickets and when you can fish. Angling Passport website

Staff Update

The trustees are pleased to announce that Jack Spees has been appointed the Director of the Ribble Catchment Conservation Trust as from the 12th July 2010. We are very pleased with the progress that has been made this year and thank all the staff for their endeavours. Philip Lord, Chairman.