WTT Blog - Tagged with restoration

The results are in: barriers down, fish up

Posted on September 07, 2018

The results are in: barriers down, fish up

I’ve been looking forward to this moment for quite some time now…..well, at least a year. The monitoring of my pet project from pre-intervention (weir notching and removal / partial demolition over six structures) to several years post is quite revealing, and I’ll let the data do the talking.

Now, as a scientist, I know there are a few caveats associated with the figure above. But as there was no specific funding pot for the monitoring of the works for this duration, I am making the best of the situation. So, all surveys were carried out in each of the years for roughly the same amount of time (effort), over similar distances, using similar kit, and roughly the same time of year (although 2018 was a little later because of the incredibly dry spring / summer we have just experienced). Ideally, all of these parameters would have been standardised; ie identical each time.

An enthusiastic response from Yorkshire

Posted on November 17, 2016

An enthusiastic response from Yorkshire

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.  

Small land use changes reap big freshwater benefits

Posted on November 18, 2015

Small land use changes reap big freshwater benefits

The UK landscape is a mosaic primarily of agriculture interspersed with woodland, grassland, urban enclaves and veined with river networks and wetlands. We should all realise by now that this pattern in the landscape has a marked effect on 'ecosystem goods and services', the natural benefits that the environment provides to us, and particularly those associated with freshwater. How we use (or abuse) the land, i.e. influence the landscape pattern, and the downstream consequences to water quality are a focus of the current consultation on diffuse pollution to which WTT has already responded (and I encourage you to do so too).    

A new study of an urbanising but predominantly agricultural landscape in the US draws upon data from 100 Wisconsin sub-watersheds and has important implications for managing and restoring landscapes to enhance surface water quality, groundwater quality, and groundwater supply. The study considered the landscape pattern in terms of composition (the type and amount of particular patches) and its configuration (the layout of those patches); and while both appear to have some bearing upon freshwater services, the composition had a stronger influence on water quality and supply. 

It’s not the length that matters….

Posted on October 05, 2015

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.