News

In 2014, the Eastridge Estate on the River Kennet in Berkshire (with Windrush AEC) won a WTT Conservation Award for a large-scale project that improved in-river habitat, fish passage and wetland meadows. Now, a beautiful video, produced by Chalkstream Fly, highlights the ongoing work and ethos of the Estate.

News from the north.… WTT Research & Conservation Officer, Jonny Grey, reports that brown trout are beginning to spawn on the Aire in Yorkshire. The noteworthy aspect of this is that the majority of redds so far have been found within the reaches that he has been working with Bradford City AA to improve.

Around 100 people gathered in the ballroom of the Savile Club in London to celebrate the tremendous contributions of individuals and groups to improving river habitat. It is always an uplifting experience to see the dedication, determination and expertise that is demonstrated in the projects competing for the annual Wild Trout Trust Conservation Awards.  

The awards are judged by Dr Paul Gaskell and Shaun Leonard of the Wild Trout Trust and Martin Jaynes of the River Restoration Centre.

Paul Gaskell said:

We present the Bernard Venables Award to recognise those who, voluntarily, have given a lifetime of service to wild trout conservation and to WTT and whose vital work, perhaps unusual, sometimes outstanding, often goes unrecognised.

The 2018 winner is Phil Bailey, a keen river conservationist, angler, fishing guide and fly-tier. Phil was the inaugural President of the Australian Trout Foundation and has fished and guided across many countries, now settled in Yorkshire. Here, he works tirelessly across the county for wild trout conservation, including shoulder-to-shoulder with WTT’s Research & Conservation Officer, Jonny Grey, on the Wharfe, Ure, Aire and Ribble.

Phil is an ambassador for wild trout (and WTT), an event organiser, Riverfly monitor, tree planter, weed planter, woody debris installer and invasive species annihilator. His friends, in their proposition, noted of Phil that “His continued energy, enthusiasm, commitment and sheer hard work to benefit wild trout and grayling populations know no bounds, in what is now his eighth decade. In short, improvement of conditions for fish, and being out on (and in) the river, are his main passions in life”. 

The Lower Misbourne Enhancement Project a partnership between Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust, Bucks County Council, the EA and the Wild Trout Trust came runner-up in the Canal & River Trust’s Living Waterways Awards (Natural Environment category) last night. They were pipped to first place by a very extensive £2 million green infrastructure project in Wales which saw a canal restored!

A kilometre of the Misbourne at Denham Country Park has been enhanced for the benefit of wild brown trout and its declining water vole population. The judges were particularly impressed with the project’s delivery of improved river access at the visitor centre which enables youngsters to safely and cleanly explore the river, whilst other more precious habitats have been protected behind brushwood hedges. A team of volunteers were led by the WTT’s Rob Mungovan over a period of two weeks, learning how to instal flow deflectors, create brushwood ledges and use hinge-cut trees for marginal cover.

The work didn’t stop there, an excavator was used to re-shape the river bed to create shallow riffles and new pool habitats, and a backwater habitat was created at the confluence of the nearby River Colne.

As any discerning fly angler knows, trout can feed extensively on terrestrial insects that fall onto the surface of the water. New research published this week (link here) has shown how these terrestrial inputs, essentially subsidies to waterbodies, shape the structure of stream food webs.

Well known entymologist Dr Cyril Bennett has written up a number of methods for attempting to restore fly populations in rivers.As Cyril notes in his recent interesting paper, these methods are aimed not at trying to boost existing fly numbers but rather for situations where pollution has impacted local populations and recolonisation from upstream is limited. Cyril also makes the really important point that such methods are only applicable where the issues that caused any perceived fly declines have been tackled.