Posted on December 06, 2016
As a follow on from Mike Blackmore’s ‘Mad March’ blog, this is what he has been up to recently, or rather this blog post is about the challenges of moving house, getting sick and still getting projects delivered! You can read more about some of the projects Mike has been delivering in our Autumn Newsletter
Mike is the WTT Conservation Officer for the South and West.
Posted on November 25, 2016
Catching and Releasing the first Fly-Caught wild trout from a stream that was dug out of a city-centre pipe was probably the highlight of 2016 for me!
Buried in a brick tunnel under England's industrial developments of the 1800s, a section of the Porter Brook in Sheffield was brought back to the surface by a bold project co-ordinated by Sheffield City Council and involving the Wild Trout Trust, The Environment Agency and many more partners.
You can now witness the actual process of freeing the Brook from its pipe - and the creation of functioning trout-stream habitat in this short video.
Yet, the above video does not show the completed park that was a huge part of the entire project - and it does not show the planted vegetation beginning to develop in the summer of 2016. And, it does not show any fly fishing or video of a trout capture...
But the film, below, that was made by the excellent Huckleberry Films as part of the Canal & Rivers Trust "Living Waterways" awards (in which this project won the "Contribution to the Built Environment Award")...Well that DOES show those things too:
Hopefully, with visits from town planning staff from as far away...
Posted on November 17, 2016
You may have seen via the WTT news pages or via Twitter that we were awarded a grant from Yorkshire Water’s Biodiversity Enhancement Fund which is part of their Blueprint for Yorkshire.
According to Yorkshire Water: The Wild Trout Trust secured funding to deliver projects across multiple locations within the Yorkshire Water operating area. Projects focused on work to restore, improve and maintain becks, rivers and wetlands. This work is in line with the government’s Catchment Based Approach plans for river management and is in in partnership with the EA, the Rivers and Wildlife Trusts, and local community groups. The proposal also focused on enhancing volunteer’s practical skills in order to enable them to apply learnt techniques on other nearby sites and create a network of environmental stewardship groups for the future.
Posted on November 11, 2016
It is incredibly difficult to drag our Conservation Officer for the South & West, Mike Blackmore, out of the river (where we know he prefers to be). Therefore, in order not to distract him from his valuable work before the end of the ‘in-river’ season, we asked Kris Kent to update us on work to restore the River Dever. Kris has been fly fishing and trotting for brown trout and grayling for over 20 years in the UK, Europe and Scandinavia. He is PR Officer for the Grayling Society and helps WTT with our online communications and events. (WTT Director: he’s also a bloody good egg – thank you, Kris, for all your help).
I was between jobs so I emailed Shaun Leonard, Wild Trout Trust Director, to see if there was anything I could help out the Wild Trout Trust with. I was thinking of a little light administration, spreadsheets, reports or the like. Within a few minutes Shaun called me on the mobile. “Did I fancy helping out Mike Blackmore with a project he was working on?” I said “Why not.” Shaun suggested I call Mike to make the necessary arrangements. Mike seemed a little bewildered by the fact that I was going to be helping out but he suggested that I start the following Tuesday and filled me in on the logistics.
Posted on October 14, 2016
Well, the results are in and the fish above were all captured (carefully measured and then returned unharmed to the Lyme Brook)...
All of them were caught clustered around the installed logs and planted flag iris that were introduced throughout the second phase of habitat creation works completed on through the partnership between WTT, Groundwork West Midlands, the EA and The Friends of Lyme Valley Parkway.
The short video below shows the channel transformation - and they ways that the re-shaped river channel is maintained by harnessing the flow of water so that it works with the introduced materials and planted vegetation.
You can also see footage of the very first fish population survey carried out after the habitat works in this section of the brook (and although we didn't see any trout this time, we will continue to work on bridging the gaps between the main River Trent and the potential spawning habitat that has been created in this tributary stream.
Posted on October 06, 2016
A number of my blog posts have featured Eastburn Beck. It’s my pet project because it is the first that I cut my teeth on after moving to Yorkshire, because I live overlooking its headwaters and hence it is a very easy and accessible site for me to monitor. It is also exciting because it has ably demonstrated the value of partnership working, and how with critical mass, relatively small habitat improvements are snowballing both up and downstream from the original work plans as word spreads; this is quite typical for projects that the WTT is involved with!
Pre & post some weir notching we undertook on Eastburn Beck at Lyndhurst Wood. The channel width is narrower with more natural pool, riffle, and depositional features
Posted on September 19, 2016
I'm delighted to say that the Porter Brook Deculverting project was selected as the 2016 Winner in the Canal & Rivers Trust for "Contribution to the Built Environment". This was a multi-partner partnership project (with key involvement of Sheffield City Council, the Environment Agency and more) that I was fortunate to have the opportunity to design the in-channel habitat features to provide the best functional benefits for trout and the wider aquatic foodweb.
As well as my previous blog posts on the subject, the awards scheme made short videos (less than 2-minutes) long that captured key elements of each project entry. You can see the film for the winning Porter Brook project below. Please enjoy and share (and also check out the other project videos on YouTube from this year's awards).
Posted on September 19, 2016
I'm delighted to say that the Porter Brook Deculverting project was selected as the 2016 Winner in the Canal & Rivers Trust for "Contribution to the Built Environment". This was a multi-partner partnership project (with key involvement of Sheffield City Council, the Environment Agency and more) that I was fortunate to have the opportunity to design the in-channel habitat features to provide the best functional benefits for trout and the wider aquatic foodweb. The Sheffield Branch of Trout in the Town "SPRITE" are caring for the habitat as well as monitoring the aquatic life in this new section of daylighted urban stream.
As well as my previous blog posts on the subject, the awards scheme made short videos (less than 2-minutes) long that captured key elements of each project entry. You can see the film for the winning Porter Brook project below. Please enjoy and share (and also check out the other project videos on YouTube from this year's awards).
Posted on August 23, 2016
Anyone who knows anything about fish in the UK will surely know Dr Martyn Lucas, the head of the Aquatic Animal Ecology Research Group within the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Durham University. He’s an absolute legend and all round good bloke with whom I have done some research in the past. From amongst the many projects he is involved with, his group has published two papers this year revolving around fish passage issues. The first was led by Mike Forty (supported by the Catchment Restoration Fund, CRF) who wrote a layman’s version for us in Salmo and whom I have written about before on the WTT blog pages. Below is a quick summary by Martyn, reproduced with his permission, regarding the second output which included brown trout and bullhead as the study species.
Jeroen Tummer’s paper concerns longitudinal connectivity restoration for stream fish communities, particularly in terms of the use of ‘nature-like’ passage solutions and obstacle removal, and the utility of a more holistic approach for evaluating outcomes. One of the key findings of our study is that quantitative fish surveys don't do a very good job in telling us whether connectivity restoration work for stream fishes has worked or not in the short term! There are much better ways of doing this as illustrated in the paper. However, they do provide valuable, contextual evidence about changes in the fish community towards or away from the restoration objectives, including those in the longer term (so long as standardised monitoring at a regular frequency is continued).
Posted on August 22, 2016
Posted on August 18, 2016
Posted on August 04, 2016
Connectivity is a recurrent theme of my blog posts. Last year I wrote about plans for notching some of the redundant low mill weirs on a tributary of the River Aire, local to me. Those plans will come to fruition in the next few weeks as Pete Turner (Environment Agency) and I have had our bespoke environmental permit consented to progress the works, so I’ll report back to show you how the channel is evolving. I also wrote about making connections and how Mike Forty’s PhD research with Ribble Rivers Trust had thrown up some really interesting results, especially regarding the importance of free movement for precocious parr; the published work is available here.
To communicate the worth of habitat restoration work (in supporting the Ecosystem Service approach & Natural Capital principles) to the wider public and to potential future funders, and thus maintain, increase and maximise the potential impact, there is an urgent need for some simple and accessible assessments that a broad audience can appreciate. I have proposed to use the concept of the food web in this context because: a) the knock-on effects of habitat degradation translate into food web alterations very quickly; and b) the food web is recognised by a broad swathe of society (and from a very early age). Hence, measures of food webs can be used as an engagement & educational tool that will increase the understanding and value of restoration projects, as well as a tangible and effective measure for funding applications.
Posted on July 28, 2016
The great strength of (good!) science is that it tells us how confident we can be that what you see is a true effect - or just part of the natural random variation in nature. As humans, we are so often "fooled by randomness" - we see faces in clouds and the image of the Madonna in Fried Chicken...
As one of many fascinating aspects of our own Prof. Jon Grey's research, he has contributed to the understanding of what invasive crayfish actually do "do" in our rivers. You can see his thoughts on the most recent National Crayfish Conference that he attended and contributed to here: NATIONAL CRAYFISH CONFERENCE.
Below you can enjoy some fascinating insights into what existing good quality science can tell us about invasive crayfish
Did you know that there are at least 7 non-native species of crayfish in the UK? What do we really know (by controlled measurements) about their impacts on our native fish - including trout and salmon? Is there a crayfish species that is worse for UK waterways than the signal crayfish? The answer to the last question is yes; but right now it is still only here in small numbers...
Posted on July 08, 2016
Andy Thomas gives us a great selection of his three favourite projects from last year. These are a quick highlights of his works to improve trout and sea trout streams in his role as Conservation Officer for Southern England for the Wild Trout Trust. Improving an urban concrete sea trout stream is his first stop...
Posted on July 05, 2016
Careful and objective research reported at the Annual Get Together of the Wild Trout Trust by Dr. Kevin Wood of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust.
