Two weeks rolled into one!
April 26, 2010
I must apologise to those who kept checking online to see if I had put a post up last week, but I was stuck in a “special” hotel in Cornwall on a training course about reducing diffuse pollution from farms. But before I get carried away on that topic I’ll fill you in on the week starting the 12th!
Monday was the usual, Philip came in to go through stuff lots of correspondence, and I finally finished off my report on our electrofishing of Chipping brook for the Hodder Consultative. It was interesting to look at the data on a map and considering the various outcomes that we could derive.
Tuesday I had to take the dog in for her booster shot first thing (and got the great news that she has cysts on her ovaries!). When finally on the office I arranged a Crayfish survey (which I’m doing tomorrow!), got our RFCA report done, and then took Steve Powell out to look at some of our projects on the go this year. We stopped at Padiham, Montford, Barrowford and Swanside. Montford was interesting as we saw anglers fishing the run created by the weir removal, from the right bank, something that couldn’t be done before!
Wednesday I had a meeting with the Dan Atkinson from the EA (now of the River Hodder DVD Fame!) and Mike Horner to discuss our River fly partnership and the future plans. Mike is going to get involved this will help in allowing us to continue to expand the scheme. It was a really positive meeting with Dan Confirming that he had secured some funding for us for this year training events!
Thursday I prepared a presentation for the next day, and then nipped up to empress to get a quote. In the afternoon I took out our fencer to look at a couple of jobs. And then in the evening, it was the Hugh Falkus memorial. What a great night, to see so many anglers come together for a beer, a supper and to look at the work that is going on to improve the river, and obviously to have a gander at the tackle, fly tying and paintings also on offer!
Friday I was up at the AONB offices at Dunsop, who were hosting a training day for Farm Environment Planners. These are the guys who write the applications for agri-environment schemes. A year ago we had mentioned to Natural England and the AONB staff that we felt Agri-environment schemes were missing out opportunities to help the river. So they asked me to come along and give a presentation. It was great, I really was able to hammer home the importance of small streams and looking after them and how easy it was for them to incorporate it into a scheme. Although there was some debate about fences not being good for Landscape value!
Last week…. where to start. It was an intense week, certainly not a Jolly, although I managed to sneak in three 2 hour fishing sessions on the West Country Rivers Trust passport scheme, and a few pints! The scheme is called Pinpoint, it is a scheme to provide rivers trusts with tools to visit farms and make suggestions on how they can reduce their cost of operating, and at the same time help the environment. It is confidential, free and it may save them a penny or two!! For example, separating roof water by repairing guttering could cost £200 but save them £2000 on spreading costs! And less spreading means less slurry/dirty water and less compaction of soil – in turn helping the rivers!
A true win win. A great week, and the chance to meet up with some colleagues from all over the country and exchange ideas and adivce had got me re-energised and enthused – feeling like I can take on the world…well maybe just the Ribble Catchment.
A short but packed week
April 12, 2010
Well altough I had only just recovered from a touch of man flu and had been off most of the previous week a shortened week seemed just what I needed. But the work load didn’t seem to care whether I was in four or five days!
Tuesday I did a walk over survey of barriers to migration on Colne Water from just below Colne to Laneshaw bridge. The result was that our records of artificial (complete) barriers to migration now tops a 100. Colne water has some fantastic habitat for all species from trout to dipper and the certainly Kingfisher that seemed to be keeping an eye on us all day. However barriers to migration cause more than just problems to fish, but reduce “eco system function” – which is a wider concept, gravel is held behind weirs that should be down stream being spawned on by fish, used by inverts for cover and dippers to hunt on. Barriers also increase the kinetic energy of water, the increased energy results in increased levels of erosion, not just bankside but river bed reducing habitat and increasing diffuse pollution, and they also cause changes in temperature! That is just a few of the problems barriers create.
Wednesday I plotted out the barriers, started work on some more reports and had a short meeting with Philip, a true office based day. I also had to prepare some bits for Thursday as we were hosting a monitoring workshop for Rivers trusts across the UK.
The turn out for the workshop was a little less than we had hoped but we had some key figures there and plenty of correspondence from those who were not. We discussed everything from techniques of monitoring we employ and would recommend to new trusts, to new innovative techniques we could employ to boost our knowledge of the river. It was a useful day and many things that were discussed will pave the way forward for more than just those who attended.
Friday I took Catherine our new admin officer around 3 project sites so that she had an idea of what we were doing and where. Thank fully the weather was kind and it made for a nice morning out. We then got back into the office to sort out some more funding paper work and also to look for some more! I then got a call from a prospective volunteer to say he was concerned about the lack of fish he had seen in the hyndburn, some will say this is nothing to be concerned about, but they would be wrong! Last year we found salmon fry, trout fry, eels, bullhead and stoneloach in the Hyndburn – all be it in number lower than we would like – but they were there! I decided to call into Padiham weir and then pop over to the Hyndburn. Padiham is progressing, slower than I would like but then I’m pretty darn impatient! I noticed some discolouration in a near by beck, and after a little look I called it in to the EA hot line (0800 807060) and reported the incident, there were no dead fish and inverts seemed fine, but it should not have been how it was and even if the source can’t be found it is key to report this so people can investigate. The trip to the Hyndburn was both positive and negative as we managed to spot a feeding fish, but also I was shown a tributary that was as dead as they come. I mean really dead, no worms, leeches midges nothing. The EA are looking at the problems as best they can but it’s going to be a lengthy process to fix, as the tributary drains a large urban area, it will be up to people to make sure they aren’t polluting to sort this completely, and that includes washing your car on the street so the soap ends up in the surface water, to pouring oil down drains. At some point we need to take responsibility on the small and large level to stop polluting rather than rely on the EA to stop offenders.
Man Flu
April 6, 2010
Well last week man flu got the better of me, so this should be the shortest blog post ever!
I made it in Monday and had our normal sit down with Philip sorted a few emails then unplugged my laptop and headed home. I felt quite sorry for myself but I can never sit still so once at home got in front of the fire and warm, then out came the lap top. I was able to do some tidying up work on my data, and sort some old photo records. A job that was constantly being put off but perfect when you don’t really want to do anything to taxing. By Thursday I was feeling better so I headed into the office and tried to catch up on a few things before I went to a meeting with Philip and then on the EA to a meeting to discuss with the area manager our partnership working currently and into the future. It was very positive and both John and Philip & I came away with a nice list of things to tackle. From there I headed back to the office briefly to sort a few more bits, then headed home for the weekend. I’m still sniffling a bit but used the long weekend to get back to something near top form.
So fingers crossed that’s my main cold of the year out of the way!
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