News

This recent report, Chalk streams of the future: The effects of climate change on biodiversity in England’s iconic river ecosystems is an easy-to-read summary of the challenges that our chalk streams face, with climate change compounding the impact of multiple pressures including physical modification, pollution, over abstraction and invasive species.

One of the key objectives of WTT’s ‘in river’ habitat projects is to build resilience to these challenges. Simple but effective measures that we use include using bankside vegetation to provide shade and act as a buffer to limit sediment and nutrient inputs, using woody material to help create a sinuous channel with pools and riffles and clean gravels and taking more radical action to restore natural processes – see video below. 

The Wild Trout Trust will be delivering a habitat workshop on a tributary of the River Aln in Northumberland (location TBC), supported by Northumberland Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency, funded through rod licence sales and the Fisheries Improvement Programme.

15 December 2022, 10am to 3pm.

The event will entail a river walk and talk to identify habitat issues currently affecting the river and general discussion around habitat management and improvements. The event is planned with local anglers in mind but is open to anyone that would like to understand more about riverine habitats.

Pollution from sewage outfalls and from farming is, quite rightly, causing outrage in the media. A major pollution event will cause fish to be killed, but what is the impact of chronic pollution on our rivers? 

Researchers have been awarded funding by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs from the £8.4 million understanding changes in quality of UK freshwaters programme to investigate how pollutants enter, leave and interact with rivers and supporting ecosystems. Research projects will also determine how the movement of pollutants will be modified with changes in the water cycle and create better tools to monitor and measure pollution.

Five projects are being funded, with two led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. 

Earlier this year, Research & Conservation Officer, Jonny Grey, was awarded funding from the Yorkshire Water Biodiversity Enhancement Programme for a project very close to his heart.

Lothersdale Beck is an Aire headwater and an important tributary of the Eastburn Beck system, a major flow contributor within the Upper Aire so any work to slow the flow and improve water quality ‘at source’ is obviously very valuable.

A plan to restore our chalk streams to health has been published by the Chalk Stream Restoration Group. This group is hosted by the Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) and is chaired by WTT Founder and Vice President, Charles Rangeley Wilson OBE. 

Charles says: 

'It’s not a once-and-for-all fix-all, but I do think it marks a step-change in our collective attempts to restore good ecology to our beleaguered chalk streams.

A major barrier to fish migration has been removed from the River Ecclesbourne in Derbyshire. The 2.5m-high weir at Snake Lane in Duffield, near Derby, was built in the 1970s during a flood alleviation scheme, replacing an older structure at a former corn mill. The weir was impassable to fish, but the recent appearance of Atlantic salmon below the weir renewed the impetus to tackle the problem.

Salmon have begun to return on their annual spawning run via the Rivers Trent and Derwent, after previous fish passage improvements at weirs on those rivers. In addition, the restoration of fish passage at this site reconnects the fish populations of the River Derwent and River Ecclesbourne, the confluence of which is less than a mile downstream, benefitting grayling, trout, barbel, chub, dace, minnow, bullhead and brook lamprey.

The works to remove the weir took place between July and October this year, the culmination of planning and design work which began in February 2019. Following a fish rescue, the river was diverted around the site via a secondary channel (a legacy of the corn mill) allowing work to take place in relatively dry conditions. The reinforced concrete weir was cut into chunks using specialist diamond cutting equipment resembling ‘cheese wires’, allowing the sides to be left intact and the adjacent bridge and walls to remain undisturbed.

In 2019, an Environment Agency report on pollution from farms on the River Axe in east Devon painted a damning picture, describing a river “abandoned” to polluting farms 

Now, another Environment Agency report, this time from North Devon, paints an equally grim picture of illegal pollution and a lack of policing of the dairy industry, with farmers making “business” decisions to expand production at the expense of the environment, safe in the knowledge that they will be extremely unlucky to face any sanctions from regulators. This appears not to be an issue of the odd rogue farmer – it’s widespread - see also this even more recent investigation from Wales

There’s a common theme: little or no policing by Govt agencies.In August 2021, Defra announced increased funding for farm inspections in England, then, according to its CEO, Sir James Bevan, told the EA and its new team of inspectors not to enforce the very rules it had introduced to protect our rivers. 

Recent research has tagged eels in the Azores and, for the first time, tracked them on the oceanic part of their migration to the Sargasso Sea. Since the early 20th Century it has been thought that eels spawned in the Sargasso Sea, but there has been no direct evidence.

European eel are critically endangered – populations have declined by 95% since the 1980s – so a better understanding of their lifecycle will hopefully aid conservation efforts.

More on this story on the BBC website.

WTT Conservation Officer Rob Mungovan is interviewed for Radio Cambridgeshire about the River Cam and the River Shep. He talks about the recent project to improve habitat at Byron's Pool Nature Reserve in Cambridge and the impacts of abstraction on our chalkstreams, particularly during the current drought. He spots plenty of wildlife as he walks the with presenter, Thordis Fridriksson.

There will be more about the Byron's Pool project in our Autumn Newsletter, which will be sent to members in early November. Lots more information about chalkstreams on our chalkstream web page.