Catchment Scale Restoration
November 10, 2011
Despite the promise of more regular posting I seem to have fallen behind..again! It’s been three weeks since my last post, and in fairness one of those was meant to be a weeks holiday. I managed 3 days off but came into the office to submit some grant claims and to set up our new IT network ahead of our new staff starting. In my week off I had planned to fish for salmon all week, but this was rather difficult given it didn’t rain, which is quite amusing seeing it seemed to rain non-stop for the 3 weeks previously! That siad I did manage to catch a small cock salmon whilst grayling fishing! I played it hard and fast (despite the light tackle) and as soon as I unhooked it (in the water) it charged off back to continue its journey.
Although I didn’t appreciate the dry week Katie and Gareth working on the Restoring Sustainable abstraction did, and they managed to complete there second round of electro fishing linked to the project. Now Katie is up to her eyeballs in spreadsheets and field sheets, something she is going to have to work on in the evenings as she has started on our Darwen Feasibility Project, this is something Gareth is used to as whilst doing our intensive catchment surveys he was also writing his dissertation, and between us all we will give Katie all the help we can.
The Darwen feasibility project… this is a really challenging sub-catchment that requires some fairly intensive scrutiny. The Environment Agency have limited data, but a field officer who knows his the patch well. So we plan to capture as much data on fish, inverts, habitat, barriers and invasive species as possible. Following this we will prioritise our projects and create some project plans to try and link reconnect and improve habitat. It is an expansion of the area we as a trust traditionally covered, and so we will be looking for as much help as possible from the angling clubs to local community groups to help deliver this (so if you know this river well, or you know someone who does please get in touch!).
Gareth has finished entering the survey sheets from the hundreds of surveys conducted this year and yesterday he and I went about the first analysis. This is to determine the lengths that represent the different age classes. For example on the Calder the Young of the year (the fish that hatched as eggs in April also known as fry) have a maximum length of approximately 90mm. We then looked at the effectiveness of catching these fishing using our methods so that we can make an accurate estimate on the number of fry present at each site. It was pleasing to see that we had achieved a consistent effort compared to last year and that it even had “statistical significance”! In the next couple of weeks Gareth will finish the analysis ahead of his presentation at our AGM, and the production of our annual fisheries report. At the same time Gareth is preparing for our proposed Salmon Tagging project in 2012, this is no small project and will provide VITAL information to the strain of salmon that run our river early in the season. This isn’t just important to anglers, but these fish provide food for many other species such as Otters, and there absence in the Late Winter Early spring can leave quite a gap in an Otters diet.
During the summer whilst Gareth and Katie were gathering their fish data, they also gathered data on Otters and Invasive species. These we will be displayed online in the not to distant future. The Invasives data is probably the largest scale inventory of invasive species along our rivers in Lancashire if not the country! This will help to form the basis of another significant project that we have started that is being headed up by Charlie and Adam. These guys are working up an invasives control and eradication project. The aim will be to identify priority areas for work, train volunteers and provide resources (as well as undertake some work themselves!). The training will be in everything from ID to certified use of knapsack sprayers and stem injection kits. There will be an expected level of commitment from the volunteer for the more expensive training, such as 50 hours of spraying.
The Ribble Life project is continuing nicely and we have collated the data from the Launch day, we are still engaging with groups who didn’t attend on the day, particularly community groups such as Friends of Park groups, Parish Councils, and Residents associations. If your are one of these kind of groups and haven’t heard from us and want to be involved please get in touch through ribblelife@ribbletrust.com Jo Spencer the Community Engagement officer for this project will then get in touch and we can come and talk to you about this project (there will soon be a website for this project providing more information).
The URES project in Burnley continues to grow, and we have our first steering group meeting coming up, where we hope to get additional direction and support to the project. We recently visited Burnley College in connection with this and were blown away by the standard of the facility, and the enthusiasm of the students. We really hope to work closely with the college to help deliver some of our projects (a new website will be online shortly to provide links to the upcoming activities and the background to this project).
Stephen is very busy with finishing off this years habitat projects and preparing for next years, habitat work is still an important core function of the trust. With some added emphasis of late from Bathing Waters, it may be hard to believe but Livestock faecal matter (poo to most!) that is washed of the fields anywhere within the catchment may well cause a failure of Bathing Water Standards along the Ribble Estuary and Fylde coast, which were recently were in the news for having failed there Bathing Water Standards. As well as this Stephen is preparing for the next round of Trout in the Classroom, we are hoping to expand this to 8 schools from 7, but are chasing some funding for this.
Cam and Gayle Beck is continuing to progress with the Fencing on Cam beck well underway, Large woody debris on-site and trees ordered. We are hoping to finalise the grip blocking in the next few days ahead of starting before Christmas.
And some extra good news from yesterday is that we have secured significant funding from The Rivers Trust for 3 more fish passes in 2011/2012!
As you may gather the trust has undergone some rapid expansion, faster and larger than we had ever planned. We have a great team of really dedicated staff all with strong links to this catchment and I see the expansion of the trust resulting in an even larger expansion of the work we deliver, and if you imagine what we delivered with just myself and Stephen I think you will be as excited as I am about the true catchment scale of what we will achieve over the next couple of years.
Environment Agency news- 25,000 more homes to be better protected from flooding
- Completion of Olympics environmental works secures green legacy
- Environment Agency moves to stop rivers running dry
- Woman rescued as car is swept away by floods
- Environment Agency tracks alien invaders
- Unwanted Christmas trees provide festive flood defences
- Queens green energy scheme nears completion
- Case for change: Drought to be commonplace by 2050s
- New taskforce will tackle illegal waste sites that blight communities
- Environment Agency moves to manage scarce water supplies across Eastern England