Trout in the Town:

Here is a video showing just one of a long series of ongoing surveys on a site that was impacted by dredging activities. The Environment Agency re-introduced large boulders and also installed some marginal plants to help the site to begin to recover. Subsequent to that, volunteers from SPRITE- a group set up in Sheffield through the Trout in the Town project applied for permission and carried out re-planting of water crowfoot to improve the structural and invertebrate community diversity within the channel. The method for doing this in spate rivers is highly original and was developed primarily by Dave Woodhead - a central and long-standing SPRITE member, with Ranunculus collection from biologically clean headwater sites and planting work parties being run by Dave and Paul Hughes. SPRITE also carried out some wildflower seed planting and have joined with other local volunteers to reduce the amount of Himalayan Balsam in reaches upstream of this section. The video shows how impor...

I was fortunate enough to contribute to Tuesday's launch event for the mammoth achievements that have been made (both in the river channel and within the local community) around Greater Manchester's River Medlock (see this piece from the BBC last year reporting part-way through the initial works http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24562282 ) Although a great many people have contributed both to the overall project (and to Tuesday's launch event) - a lot of credit has to go to key personnel like Ollie Southgate of the E.A., Jo Fraser of Groundwork and Dave Barlow of Manchester City Council. The ongoing success of this project owes a lot to their drive and vision - both in the brutally difficult world of making such challenging projects actually happen in the modern economic and social climate and in the amount of effort to involve local communities by reconnecting people with their local river. Sir Richard Leese shouts "Trout!" along with the kids w...

Look what the Wandle Trust have achieved now. http://www.wandletrust.org/?p=5427 The major connectivity AND channel habitat morphology improvements are hugely significant milestones in the ongoing assisted recovery of this London chalkstream. It is, also, on the site of the impounded reach I used on this video to illustrate the problems that weirs pose for habitat quality (not only fish passage, but river corridor biodiversity as  whole). I'm looking forward to going back to take some footage of the 'after' shot :-)