A wet winter
December 23, 2011
It has been an odd winter, and although not at an end it is hard to believe that last year we had nearly 2 months of snow by this point. The heavy rain brings advantages and disadvantages, fish will be moving to the places in the catchment that a dry cold winter makes inaccessible for spawning, but on the other hand this level of rain will be washing increased amounts of silt off the land an into the river. It is easily the wettest winter in my 4 years in Lancashire.
The rain has made the grip blocking and fencing on Cam Beck more challenging, with wet ground conditions hampering efforts, but at the same time we it will be causing immediate re-wetting of the upland moor where we are blocking the grips. The high river levels have also shown that the Willow stakes planted to protect the fencing on Cam Beck have been successful in so far as protecting the fence, fingers crossed they will take and we will see fantastic growth in the new year!
The invasives guys have no found the source of Himalayan Balsam on at least 3 becks (Swanside, Loud and Croasdale). This will help to inform the first invasives species control programmes for next year. We also have 27 mink traps out, and 2 mink rafts.
The Darwen is a really challenging catchment, Katie is still gathering data and carrying out walk over surveys. It can be really difficult on river like this where trying to see where an improvement can be made that will add real benefit, given all of the other issues. But we firmly believe that the smallest improvements open the doors of much larger ones, for example improving the aesthetics of a river in just a couple of places could result in less littering and opportunities to engage and educate people on pollution. This will be a real test for trust in the new year, but one I personally am relishing.
URES is moving along nicely with information leaflets being produced and many links and “partnerships” being formed. We are especially excited about the prospect of making a video that will detail the progress through to completion of the project with the Burnley Camera Club.
Gareth is busy completing his annual report on the electro fishing programme, and although the title suggests it’s all about fish, the report and the surveys cover so much more, we have data on White Clawed Crayfish, Invasives, Pollution, Habitat and Otters. In fact we are significantly adding to the EA’s database on Otters. If you are keen to find out about the Salmon tagging project that is running next year visit the project page where Gareth will be keeping a blog to keep interested parties up to date.
Our planning and preparation for next years work continues, and we are in the process of finalising our grant funding bids for submission in the first week of January.
Ribble Life, is another Challenging project (you may start to realise we don’t like the simple life!). It isn’t challenging from the perspective of talking to people and developing links, that’s the easy bit, but trying to find ways of talking to people who aren’t usually “interested” in rivers. We are trying to do this quickly and simply, as all to often consultation and engagement become projects of their own that result in a condition we call “Stakeholder Fatigue”. We are desperately trying to avoid this, and make sure that everything we talk to stakeholders about becomes a very real and tangible action straight away. We hope that the spring and summer will make this easier because doing catchment tours to identify projects with community groups is not the most fun when it’s raining!
And on that sunny note, have a fantastic Christmas, and I look forward to working with you to improve our River in the new year!
p.s. keep an eye out for our 12 page newsletter due out soon!!!
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