WTT Blog

Our northern urban river correspondent, Andrew Griffiths, tells a remarkable tale from a recovering upper tributary of the Ribble…

The discovery of a lone dead fish may seem an inauspicious beginning for a fruitful relationship with a conservation charity that has the beating heart of a trout at its core, but that was the case for Skelmersdale’s Mike Flaherty on his local River Tawd.

WTT’s Conservation Officer Rob Mungovan has recently been hard at work on the River Mel in Cambridgeshire. 

This partnership project, in and around the village of Melbourn, has included adding 200 tonnes of gravel and chalk, to restore a healthy river bed with lots of flow diversity, which in turn will create a range of habitats for different species in this well-loved small chalk stream.

Andrew Griffiths introduces one of our newest Trout in the Town chapters...

“For quite a while we’ve just been pulling rubbish out of the river, really!”

Research & Conservation Officer, Jonny Grey, is thinking laterally with a new project on the Upper Aire, funded via the Yorkshire Water Biodiversity Enhancement Programme, the local branch of Salmon & Trout Conservation, and the Upper Aire Project

In this blog post, WTT Director Shaun Leonard shares his views on a recent speech made by the outgoing Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, Sir James Bevan. 

'This has been an opportunity which has informed and educated me greatly about the natural world, both between and beyond the banks' says Freddy of his time working with WTT

Back in June 2020, Jonny Grey was excited to introduce TROUT, a project funded via the Biodiversity Enhancement Programme of Yorkshire Water – Tackling Resilience on Underperforming Tributaries. Now, with several years of data collected, what has TROUT achieved?

Six weeks on and Freddy Weaver is not only still alive but willing to tell us a tale or two from deepest Yorkshire

WTT Director Shaun Leonard and Conservation Officer Andy Thomas share their thoughts on the impact of the drought on trout populations

The recent hot weather, hard on the heels of exceptionally dry weather, has resulted in many of our rivers, streams and natural lakes suffering very badly. For many areas and particularly in the chalk streams which usually have stable flows and cool water temperatures, last winter’s lower than average rainfall has been compounded by a bone-dry spring and summer, with the double whammy of record high temperatures. Many of the rivers of the UK and Ireland, if they’re still flowing, will currently have water close to 200C, tough conditions for any fish but especially for cool water trout, salmon and grayling.

Over the next three months, Freddy Weaver will be undertaking a placement with the Wild Trout Trust in Yorkshire and working alongside Professor Jonny Grey. Here, he tells us a little about how that came to be and how his first week went.

The Arctic charr holds some good titles to its name. It is the world’s most northerly distributed freshwater fish with a range extending from Ellesmere Island in Northern Canada (82°N) to high altitude lakes in the UK and central Europe. It is also commonly referred to as the world’s most diverse vertebrate and across its range, the Arctic charr is found to be highly polymorphic, often represented by several discrete ecotypes within a single lake.

We've given the blog over to Ellie Ward, a PhD student at Durham University, to tell us more about these enigmatic fish.....

At a recent virtual conference hosted by Colne & Calder Rivers Trust, our Prof In Practice, Jonny Grey, crossed paths with Sam Townsend, a final year undergraduate in Geography at the University of Huddersfield. His interests revolve around aquatic macroinvertebrates and Natural Flood Management, which may well strike a chord with many of our members too. So, we’ve opened the WTT blog to Sam as our earliest Early Career Researcher to date.

“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy”

…paraphrased from Helmuth von Moltke, 1900

Since beginning to play with the Mayfly in the Classroom (MIC) idea in 2008, many instances of “contact” between the concept, associated apparatus and its users have occurred. Arising feedback from schools (teachers & pupils) as well as delivery partners (Rivers Trusts & Friends-of groups) is continually used to shape and tweak the resources and methods.

A part of Jonny Grey's role as a Professor in Practice is to forge links with the academic community and facilitate research projects. It was serendipitous timing last year when Lizzie Thomas contacted WTT, asking if we had any data relating to our numerous restorations - Jonny's 'TROUT project, Tackling Resilience On Underperforming Tributaries, was just beginning to bear fruit. Lizzie is a Zoology graduate from the University of Southampton and has just completed her MSc research in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial College, London. She was particularly interested in understanding the effects of habitat restoration on salmonids given their ecological and economic value and, here, summarises the findings from her thesis.