// BLOG
Rivers and people
January 23, 2012
Well I missed my Friday blog deadline as I was attending a workshop in Preston. The workshop was about the Lancashire Nature Partnership. It was a useful day with a fantastic attendance of about 70 people from various organisations. The trust had three attendees, myself, our Chairman Philip Lord and Jo Spencer the Engagement Officer for Ribble Life. Jo was not there to input into the workshop but as a “facilitator”, in essence she had to capture comments, prioirities and issues people had in relation to Rivers, Stillwater and Coasts. The LNP has many themes, but it seemed only appropriate for us to help out on the Water based one! I used this as an opportunity to observe other peoples feelings towards water, which meant having to not be so outspoken (which for those that know me, will be hard to believe!). There were many passionate people at the meeting which is always nice as it helps to re-charge enthusiasm, and I often find that this is one of the most beneficial outcomes of these types of events. That said I was fairly enthused after giving a presentation to Neloson Naturalist Society on Wednesday. They had a fantastic turn out, and everyone was keen to help with the work required to restore our rivers and streams. At the end of the meeting I was given a real boost when one of the member pulled me aside and paid me a compliment. It really boosted my confidence and drive, but also made me more concious that the work I do is not just about rivers and streams, but for the benefit of the people around them.
The benefits that our work can have for people are much greater than many realise, and the new year really does see a change in the way we deliver our work – A much greater emphasis on highlighter the benefits to communities, and also greater inclusion in delivering these benefits.
This was highlighted in a meeting on Monday with David Ingham of the Ribble Valley Strategic Partnership, who came in to discuss the ways in which we may be able to increase the linkage between our work, other work and particularly community groups within the Ribble Valley. It was quite exciting and hopefully this will progress with lots of delivery in the coming 12 to 18 months.
Tueday we had a meeting with the EA and United Utilities to discuss potential partnership working, throughout the catchment. We had several ideas, and we need to develop these further but we are hopeful that we will see some physical outcomes with these partners in the coming years.
Wednesday Stephen and I were on site on the Hodder first thing to look at the work we’ve deliverd in 2011 and work we hope to deliver in the next few months. We have a great site for large woody debris addition, and were getting really excited by possibilities, when we brought back down to earth, when we noticed some discolouration of the river. We then realised the source, the ground was still frozen and recently slurry had been spread on the field next to the river, the heavey rain on Tuesday night then proceeded to wash the slurry straight off the frozen ground and into the river. Unfortunately this is not a breach of any regulations in the area we visited. But highlighted the problems of diffuse pollution we are facing. With the heavy rainfall in December and early January, much of the slurry storage farms have will be full to capacity, thus farmers will have taken the opportunity to spread slurry in the two dry days we had.
Slurry running off frozen ground
Although engagement with farmers and education of these issues is an important part of solving the issue, a key part is improving infrastructure so that they increase their slurry storage capacity. This is where I feel some sympathy with farmers, many farms don’t have the finances in place to undertake these improvements, and some improvements can be quite costly. We are now looking to setup some advisory visits and help farmers by part funding improvements where they are not obliged to do so under the law.
Thursday we met with the EA to discuss the trusts aims and priorities for addressing fish passage in the Ribble Catchment. They provided data on how many obstructions they had, interestingly there were 650! However many of these were in river structures not presenting barriers. We did though find that our barriers data base has barrier on it the EA were unaware of. It was an interesting meeting and we found an excellent way of splitting the EAs priorities and our own such that we shouldn’t replicate our efforts.
And Friday, well that was the LNP workshop!
Keeping rain water where it should be kept…
January 6, 2012
Well I won’t need to tell any of you who live locally what the weathers been like! I have been amazed by the sheer persistance of the rain, the rivers have been above average daily flows for weeks now. I hope that these big spates and near flooding haven’t done to much damage to our fish redds. I suspect that many of the salmon kelts from this years spawning will be in very poor condition now. HAving spawned they will have used up almost all of their fat reserves and high flow events like we’ve seen will result in high numbers of mortalities as the fish are either battered against banks and rocks or their fat reserves exhausted completely. However high flows can be important to kelts, as if they are fit enough to return to sea then need higher water levels to make migration back to sea possible, but timing is everything. The fish need a chance to recover from spawning and prepare for the downward journey.
It is these high flows that also cause bank erosion, flooding, consented discharges from sewage works and many other problems that affect both rivers and communities. Often the high flows are exsaperated by land drainage, often on the upland moors. The drainage I’m refering to, many will have guessed, are called grips. These drain peat moors to improve grassland, but as a result they can increase peak flows in rivers and carry with them increased amounts of peat from the moors.
On Wednesday I undertook a “perilous” journey up onto Blea Moor with a colleague from Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust and the EA. I say perilous, but really mean very very wet, windy and cold! Blea Moor is a moor that on one side drains into Gayle Beck one of the formative becks of the Ribble. Up on the moors highest point we are selectively blocking grips to reduce the speed of run-off and thus peak flows of the river, and provide a more consistent river level. It will also help to reduce diffuse pollution, restore blanket bog and thus increase carbon sequestration.
I have never been as wet in all my life, the gales driving the rain penetrated my new water proofs (a xmas present) and soaked me to the skin! But when we got to the blocked grips nothing could contain my excitement over our work – much to the amazement of a my colleagues. The blocked grips were working fantastically well and it was plainly visible that we had slowed the rate of run off. This project has been a real challenge for Ribble Trust, working with new partners and closer than ever with existing ones. There have been many obstacles, but through the effective management and dedication of both the trust and it partners we have got there. It just shows what can be achieved with a dedicated, skilled and experienced team (ok I’ll stop with the gloating!)
Grips blocked on Blea Moor retaining water where it should be
Uphill view of Blocked Grips
Other good news includes the EA securing funding for their contribution to the spring salmon tagging project, don’t forget to visit Gareth’s page on this, and have placed the order, fingers cross we will have the project running by mid February.
Our Ribble Life website is nearing completition and much of the content will be around how to get involved in specific aspects of fixing rivers. There’ll be link from our website as soon as it goes live. We have been engaging many community groups, landowners, businesses and other organisations. If we can turn everyones enthusiasm into action on the ground the Ribble is going to be a better place.
URES is really gathering pace, Vic has been busy talking to various community groups, and all her progress will be on the URES website, also soon to go live. The modelling for where we can do work is well underway. And the first fish pass we are tackling will commence in the next few months.
We recently met with our other partners on the Invasives project, for which we prepared a summary. Although before the summary we felt that perhaps we hadn’t achieved as much as we wanted when you list it all out it’s incredible what Charlie and Adam have pulled off in just 2 months. If you have any invasives to report please visit the website http://www.lancashireinvasives.org/. Although this isn’t the best time of year for tackling invasives, it has been the best time of year for preparing and contacting landowners and other groups. The guys have built a data base of 68 key landowners and secured committments from many of them. They have also had volunteers sign up for the mink trapping (27 traps in operation) and collated 7293 invasives species records for the Ribble and Lancashire – Plus much more.
Katie has almost finished her first appraisal of the Darwen, and she’s booked me down for a tour of the Darwen at the end of this month to start the next phase of the project. She has found several really encouraging areas but more poor areas. I became a little concerned at the sinister grin, as she explained before the start of the Darwen project she felt anything was possible but not anymore. Hopefully a visit from me will reinstall the “anything is possible” enthusiam and not drain my enthusiam.
Well I think that’s enough out of me for this week. Don’t forget to get intouch if you are interested in helping with tree planting over the next 3 months (dates to be confirmed).
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!!!
Planning and preparation
December 14, 2011
As the end of 2011 looms ever closer we are starting to consolidate and prepare for 2012. It’s hard to believe all that we’ve done in this year – has only been done in a year. I caught myself writing an email to a colleague about a meeting we had in September and it felt so long ago that I wrote “the meeting we had last year”!!
What our new staff are achieving in a short space of time is also incredible. Katie has almost completely captured all the EA data and displayed in GIS, and has been making site visits to prepare river surveys etc. The Darwen is going to be a really challenging area to work on, the most significant part of the work so far has been that the EA’s historical research shows that the Darwen is unlikely to have ever been an anadromous fish (sea trout and salmon) river. This is due to some significant water falls at Red Rock, which has a weir built on top, but even without the weir and downstream scour seems to be impassable. This does NOT change the project significantly. Now the focus will be in trying to re-connect local trout populations, and coarse fish populations. Moving slightly away from ecology the project will also try to change attitudes toward the river such that pollution is reduced, this will improve the river locally bu also further downstream.
The invasives project is going well, the new reporting website is on line www.lancashireinvasives.org where a simple way for the general public to report invasive species. You can report invasives not just in Lancashire but in the whole of the Ribble Catchment. Once reported it is verified by Charlie and Adam and then displayed on line. I encourage all to use this site, if you’ve out walking and see Japanese Knotweed or Himalayan Balsam, when you get back in and are on the internet, take 2 minutes just to fill in the form. Invasives were listed as one of the key priorities within the Ribble Catchment by stakeholders. There are now 27 mink traps out being operated by volunteers, who are also picking up information on other invasives and talking to landowners to encourage their involvement in the project.
Ribble Life is moving forward we have now engaged with approximately 30% of the stakeholders that were identified at the begining of the project, so far we have come up with around 12 potential projects and are now looking at the constraints and how to take these forward. If you would like to be involved or have a group that delivers river improvement work, whether physical river bank activities or educational, please get in touch at our office and ask to speak to Jo or email ribblelife@ribbletrust.com.
Gareth is has analysed last years electro fishing data and is now writing up his report, at our AGM in November he presented the basic results and it was interesting to see that trout juvenile populations seemed to remain fairly constant, but there were decrease in salmon juveniles across the catchment. Much of this was felt to be the result of the extremely cold winter and the dry spring. We are already eager for 2012 season to come round as this winter has been very different to the previous 3! Gareth is also working on our salmon tagging project, which is moving ahead nicely, and all things being well we will see this project start in February. So keep an eye out for floy tagged fish – tags that are attached to fish around the dorsal fin so keep an eye out for these, and if you catch one – at anytime of the year – please return it, and let us know!
Vic Dewhurst has started with us for the on URES, she knows Burnley and many of the groups and has made fantastic headway. We had our first steering group meeting and where we discussed various engagement ideas, and in January we will be getting back together to move 6 – 10 of the ideas forward. Some bad news, with a silver lining, since the last post there was a large fish kill on the River Brun in Burnley. Since I joined the trust I have seen several fish kills but nothing on this scale, a complete wipe out of all fish over 2kms. The EA are now working on the case, and we hope they get a good result. The silver lining… I was around Burnley on the day and found a large (38cm) trout this looked suspiciously silver, but when trout die and are left in water they often pale, to investigate further I took some scale samples and checked them under a microscope, to find that the fish was only 2 winters old!! This means that it was a SEA TROUT in BURNLEY above our fish pass! If you wonder why scales can tell me this, a wild brown trout normally takes 4 years or good feeding to get to this size, to get this big in 2 means it must have gone to see to feed on rich feeding. So although it was killed by pollution it shows a) all our fish passes are working (well except for the occasional blockage) and b) sea trout have drifted into the area. I believe that this was possibly the first sea trout in Burnley centre in over 200 years – things look good for the future!
Stephen has been busy working up next years work programs and we have applied for funding for some of this work already, and will continue to apply in the near future. The work is all around the catchment from the Yorkshire Dales, to Colne Water and the Hodder. This will involve lots of Large Woody Debris, fencing, and tree planting, so I hope you volunteers are feeling enthusiastic and fit for next year!!
What else have we been up to? Well we have now submitted applications and secured land owner permissions for our fish easement on Chipping brook. Richard Atton and I have continued to work on the Cam and Gayle Beck project, we started the grip blocking on Monday of this week!!!
1st Grip Blocked
As well as the grip blocking Richard has been working with volunteers and some Trust staff on tree planting on Cam Beck.
Trust staff on a "real work" day!
I’ve started prep for some more of next years fish passes and easements, and been doing lots of engagement work under the Ribble Life project. We also had a day out on Swanside with volunteers from Mitre Anglers making amendments to Swanside weir to improve fish passage. It’s been a real pleasure over the last 2 months as watching all the work and planning that Philip, Myself and the Trustees have been doing over the last 2 years suddenly coming to fruition is fantastic! Next year will be another Big delivery year for RRT, but perhaps a little less than the last two years, the amount of work we do will increase significantly, this might sound like a conundrum but next year we plan to put in place a lot of preparation work for 2013 which we plan to make the biggest year of delivery ever!
We are putting the final touches to our newsletter that will be out in the new year, I hope those that aren’t members sign up soon so you can have a copy of this sent to your door!
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.
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