WTT Blog

Westcountry Rivers Trust worked on 5 river catchments. For every £1 they spent on restoration - between £1.91 and £4.50 of economic value to society was gained (Click Picture to view full size)
It seems to be quite a common view that "nature" is a "nice to have" once we have taken care of jobs, business and the economy in general. A bit of a luxury when we've got some loose change left over from taking care of progress...

The problem with that is it misses the point that nobody will be doing business/earning money without functioning, healthy ecosystems. You'd struggle to breathe, for example, if there isn't enough photosynthesis happening.

The epic (and fantastic) project to restore rivers in five catchments in the south west of the UK (by Westcountry Rivers Trust) included work by independent financial analysts "NEF". The costs of doing habitat improvement and restoration were smaller than the economic value that they added to the Westcountry region.

In cases where angling passport schemes benefited from habitat improvement - that showed the highest Return On Investment. A staggering £4.50 return on each £1 spent on environmental restoration...

A brand-new panel explaining how and why the habitat works have been done on the Lyme Brook in Newcastle-under-Lyme has now been installed. This is an invaluable addition to the existing works because it allows walkers and other park-users to really appreciate the transformation.
The panel has been installed next to the first feature (a new gravel spawning riffle) that was installed at the beginning of this project. Passers-by can now learn about all the activities at that point and also as they follow the path along the stream up through the park.

Does river habitat restoration have to be a certain scale before it can be considered beneficial to the wider ecology of a river? It’s a question in one form or other that our WTT Conservation Officers often get asked. Is it really worth putting that one log deflector or hinged willow etc into that reach? Without the time or resource to conduct a robust scientific study, we’re often simply basing our opinions upon experience of what has seemed to work before. Despite the increasing number of river restoration projects being initiated across the world, scientific evidence on the long-term impacts of such projects and what makes them a success or a failure is still quite thin on the ground.

Well, apparently it is worth doing at the small scale according to some new research, provided that quality and diversity of habitat are accounted for.

...on the subject of dredging rivers for flood protection.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW KINDLE VERSION OF BOOK

On behalf of WTT, I recently attended a workshop coordinated by Dr Murray Thompson (a former MSc student of mine), the aim of which was to brainstorm on how to extend and develop river monitoring of restoration projects, particularly for citizen scientists. The workshop was generously supported by Ross Brawn, a good friend and supporter of WTT. The discussions were wide ranging and there were some interesting viewpoints raised by the various contributors (from the Environment Agency, Wildlife Trusts and Rivers Trusts, academia, consultancies, the River Restoration Centre etc).

Why? Well, in the limited number of cases where monitoring (to determine whether the restoration has achieved what it set out to do) is actually considered, then the cost of that monitoring typically is a part of an already limited restoration budget. Funding before and after sample collection, particularly in the longer-term, is not always available. However, the lack of coordinated standardised restoration monitoring has led to a paucity of knowledge about the effectiveness of restoration projects. Where monitoring has been undertaken, the sampling methodologies used were often originally conceived to detect pollution but may be incompatible for detecting ecological recovery. 

Jack Spees lays out some great examples and surprising facts (and some absolutely remarkable radio-tagging data) in his video presentation.

All this in a little over 15 mins?

Have a brew and a biscuit and check it out.

It has been a little while now since flood-waters (and how to manage them) were front page news. The dredging lobby got their wish - despite the negligible effect this would/will have on protection or recovery in the event that similar rainfall hits Somerset.

Little attention has been paid to one isolated part of Somerset that didn't flood during the deluge - the part where upland floodwater storage measures had been put in place...

Ten years down the line, progress towards adopting DEFRA's "Making Space for Water" policy is glacially-slow.

This progress seems even poorer given that these notions of managing flood risk have been with us since the 1920's and earlier...

Why should this be the case?

Dr. Karen Potter has been a Biologist, A Town Planner and now researches the science behind how and why certain ideas are blocked in Society - and how some ideas are Solidified and Enacted.

Watch her fascinating talk for all the insights into why we are currently locked into cosmetic flood prevention measures to pacify the electorate on a short-term basis (whilst society is denied the more effective measures that are known to exist and are feasible to apply).

A nice piece in the Telegraph covering the efforts and experiences of Mike Duddy - compared and contrasted to those of his son and his father. It shows how, with the ongoing ecological recovery in the heartland of the industrial revolution, their rivers have been perceived very differently by the 3 generations. Great references are also made to the work on London's River Wandle - which means that the Trout in the Town project has made contributions to both the case-study projects featured in the story...

Click here to read the article

Well, here is Wild Trout Trust Director Shaun Leonard giving a summary of some of our achievements over the last year. It was the opening presentation of this year's Annual Get Together of the WTT - which was held on the banks of the River Ribble on the weekend of June 6th and 7th 2015. I'll be putting up more presentations - including fantastic, game-changing stuff on flood risk management as well as experiences of fisheries "going wild" as an alternative to stocking/put-and-take.

As Shaun says, if you've ever wondered what your rod licence money is spent on - well a little bit of it has been spent by the WTT doing the following things for UK rivers in 2014/15...











If you think that these projects and the rest of our work are worthwhile - and if you want to contribute to ensuring that wild trout can survive and thrive in our rivers in the future - please consider joining us and supporting our work. You will get access to a great social network of informed anglers and conservationists as well as invites to special events and our great annual magazine "Salmo trutta". Membership works out at 67 pence per week so...

Professor David (Barney) Lerner and his colleagues in both the University of Sheffield and the Friends of Bradford's Becks have come up with a wildly practical and cheap way to solve a notoriously difficult and expensive problem.

Put Simply, you take a tampon out of its packet, dip it into the stream (or leave it in there if the pollution is suspected to be intermittent). Then take it out and shine a UV torch onto it. The Optical Brighteners used in detergents will fluoresce under the "black light" and you can begin to track down the source of the misconnection.

Full stories are covered here: The Guardian

and here: Wired

The Friends of Bradford's Becks is a great role model for other "Trout in the Town" groups - and we were delighted to have Professor Lerner speaking at our last Urban Conclave (video below).

We are also happy to play a part in the restoration of habitat on the Bradford Beck itself (see here for a recent habitat Advisory Visit report in support of JBA Consulting's designs for habitat improvement options: http://www.wildtrout.org/av/bradford-beck-%E2%80%93-shipley

Professor Lerner on Restoring the Bradford Beck as a Catchment Restoration Pilot Scheme:

Restoring Bradford...