WTT Blog - Tagged with habitat restoration

Just over a year ago, we posted news of a project, Love for Lothersdale Beck, which was shaping up in the home village of our Research & Conservation Officer, Jonny Grey. With most works complete, read about the progress of this holistic project

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.

And so it comes to pass….Coniston Cold weir, which in various forms has been a man-made obstruction to fish passage on the R Aire in N Yorkshire for the past 180 years at least, is no more. Instead, there is now 20.4km of uninterrupted free passage along the Aire and a major tributary.... and all for less than £8k!

Coniston Cold Weir: 19m wide and 1.2m headloss, with a 4m horizontal block-stone apron

I will not reinvent the wheel and spend time here discussing how weirs cause environmental issues. The evidence is abundant and simple to find in the scientific literature, and my colleague Paul Gaskell has recently summarised much of that, here. Then there are global-local events like World Fish Migration Day to raise awareness and I would wager that almost every conservation body involved with river restoration has a hit-list of target weirs on their local patch.

At the WTT Annual Get Together earlier this year, I had the pleasure of bumping into a former MSc student of mine, Simon Whitton, who now works at Affinity Water and is collaborating with colleagues at Cranfield University, supervising PhD students of his own; a perfect opportunity for another guest blog or four! Since abstraction and chalk streams have hit the headlines repeatedly and this year especially, we should follow Mickaël's progress with interest (and that of Jess Picken too)....

Chalk streams are highly important ecosystems and are a fundamental component of the landscape in the south and east of England. They are hotspots of ecological diversity and support important fisheries for trout and dace amongst others. However, the water that feeds chalk streams originates from groundwater, which is under increasing pressure from abstraction to supply our expanding urban populations. This conflict puts chalk streams squarely in the sights of environmental regulators and water companies as they try to find the best ways to preserve the ecology and the water supply. Hence, my project is sponsored by Affinity Water, and the Environment Agency, and is a part of Cranfield University’s Industrial Partnership PhD studentship programme.

Typical! Not two weeks after completing my round-up for the Science Spot in Salmo trutta, the annual glossy WTT publication that our members receive, an interesting paper on IMWs (Intensively Monitored Watersheds) lands on my desk. While not exactly on topic, it includes interesting snippets that would have embellished my article. However, as I wrote in the Salmo piece, the means by which knowledge is transferred nowadays means: I can (and have already) tweeted about this paper (but not included any precis or personal view of its content); I can (here, now) blog about it and impart some detail; or I can sit on it for 12 months and tell you all about it in the 2017 issue of Salmo!

IMWhats? In the Pacific Northwest, a vast tract of land with a very loosely defined boundary but it’s roughly 67 times the size of Wales if you’re interested in that sort of thing, there are at least 17 IMWs. They are an attempt to test the effectiveness of a broad range of stream restoration actions for increasing the freshwater production of anadromous salmon and steelhead and to better understand fish–habitat relationships. This is no mean feat, and the paper by Bennet and his colleagues reports on the lessons learned so far.

This is the view from my office window. Of late, I have been lucky to see across the valley. When it has been sufficiently clear there has been a stark message staring me in the face. So, what’s wrong in this image? OK, it’s not a great image but then it was taken in blowing rain. The field (centre shot) has a similar slope / exposure as those surrounding it yet it is the only one veined with rivulets of water. It is also the only one under permanent livestock grazing as compared to the fields on either side through which stock is rotated regularly. The result is a reduced crop plant height, root structure (and probably diversity), and more compacted soils leading to serious (visible) overland flow during times of heavy rain. At the bottom of that field is a tributary of the River Aire; little wonder that the Aire is often occupying the full width of its floodplain (below).