Colne Practical Visit - come and get trained!

Having studied the local weather forecasts and agonized over the potential for postponement, we are still currently planning to go for the PV on the planned dates (19th and 20th November 2009). The rendezvous point on both days (at 9:30am) will be outside the landowner's house on the A6068 Keightley road (map on link below). The house name is "Eastfield" and is on the river side of the road. PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK ON THE DOOR - this is for landmark purposes only. I suggest parking on the side streets on the opposite side of the A6068 from the river side. Please wear sensible clothes!! and bring a claw hammer and gardening gloves if you have them. The work is planned to continue on Sat and Sun (the 21st and 22nd November) following the training and demonstration work on Thursday and Friday.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en-GB&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=117522040923902349444.00047774e2ab8ac085f4c&ll=53.871204,-2.128344&spn=0.020597,0.076818&z=14

Click on the map link above for the meeting spot. This is your chance to come and get hands on training in practical river habitat management skills. In the first instance we will be using brash revetments in conjuction with stock exclusion. This will slow down innappropriate rates of erosion and provide juvenile trout with shelter and cover on a fast flowing spate stream (none of your sedate chalkstream glides here; woven willow spiling would be unlikely to survive intact!!).

People are welcome to attend either one or both days as appropriate and the club plans to continue works over the weekend (materials permitting).

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Why Presume to Remove Weirs? (with River Dove Case Study)

Weirs and the Backwards Ways that Rivers Work One of my favourite sayings on river restoration is a mangled quote from a movie

"...boxing is an unnatural act. Everything in boxing is backwards: sometimes the best way to deliver a punch is to step backwards...but step back too far and you ain't fighting at all".

So my mangled version starts out "Everything in rivers is backwards...". Basically, I never seem to run out of new examples of "what SEEMS to happen in a river is actually the complete opposite of what really happens".

The rest of this article looks at many of the "backwards" things about weirs and rivers - and finishes off with a real-world case-study that is playing out right now on the River Dove.

One spoiler alert is that, from an ecological point of view, it is almost always safe to assume that:

The best biological outcome for a river is the removal of some or all of an artificial weir.
Now, I don't expect you to believe that…

CATCH in Wincanton and News of the First Recorded Wild Brown Trout Following Their Hard Work

Blog posts are like London Buses it seems!

This one is just a very short "Congratulations" to the Folks at CATCH (Community Action to Transform the Cale Habitat) and the video put out by Wincanton Window (embedded below).

All of the folks in the partnership mentioned in the video have done HUGE amounts of work (from classroom education projects to habitat working parties and endless enthusiasm for engaging more people in their local river and much more besides).

A big disclaimer from me is that, although this project is supported by/affiliated with our Trout in the Town project - it has been Mike Blackmore who has fulfilled that role for the WTT rather than myself.

So massive well done to all involved (especially you Gary Hunt!)- it is wonderful to see all of the fish and wildlife coming back to the Cale. Of course, it is absolutely delightful to see that wild brown trout put in an appearance as well!

It seems to be all the rage for recovering urban stream projects in the &q…

Birmingham and Coventry's Urban Waterways

It's about time for a new blog post and I thought it would be good to flag up some of the investigations that I've been doing in conjunction with Waterside Care (which, in itself, is supported by Keep Britain Tidy).

As well as initial investigations on the River Cole around the Shire Country Park and Burberry Brickworks, more recent forays to the little Westley Brook, River Sowe, Stonehouse Brook and a little stream in the Holly Wood Local Nature Reserve (between Great Barr and Queslett) have seen me criss-crossing the M6 and M69 and the surrounding areas.

What always surprises me is just how much of the Black Country/Coventry area is essentially "floating" on a vast network of underground watercourses which suddenly pop up into daylight in surprising places. Of course this puts a lot of pressure onto the biology of these streams - not only from the physical "encasing" of their channels in brick and concrete (both above and below ground).

It is the ever-pre…

Trout in the Town:

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