Skip to main content

Follow up to the Wandle Practical Visit


Great news once again from the Wandle. The E.A. have played a blinder and installed the fish pass that will give upstream access to the habitat enhancement scheme (see the next post but one below) above this previously impassable barrier. Now all that remains to put the cherry on this is to tackle a second barrier (by partial removal rather than by fish pass) and to get the "tweaks" right on the habitat works.

That just leaves the permissions to be obtained for phased re-introductions of wild trout parr in order to re-establish the self sustaining trout stocks of the Wandle (previous most recent record circa 1930). Can't wait. Well done to all involved (including us at the Wild Trout Trust :):)), at the E.A. and the Wandle Trust for the works on this partnership project.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The wild trout are already reproducing in the Wandle thanks to the Trout in the Classroom project which has been running for 6-7 years. Although the EA will not stock trout into the river, they do give permission for the release of trout as part of a major educational project. Our monthly fly monitoring kick sampling has found alevins in the river this year and they only way they could get there was naturally.
OBJohn
Paul Gaskell said…
Thanks for the comment OBJ, I was delighted when Theo emailed the photo of the first "stream spawned" alevin last year. Our hope is that the sourcing of non-hatchery strain parr from a neighbouring wild river population will confer even greater survival and reproductive abilities compared to the Trout in the Classroom fish. On average, hatchery strain fish have only about 10% of the survival and reproductive success in a river compared to non-domesticated strains.

Popular posts from this blog

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 exp

The Wild Trout Trust: A Film by Chalkstream Fly

Here is a great short piece that captures what the work of the Wild Trout Trust is all about. It was made for (and broadcast on) the very first "World Fishing Day" - a 24hr live fishing programme created by FishingTV.com . It features TV personalities (and WTT President & Vice President respectively!) Jon Beer and Matthew Wright as well as Director of the Trust, Shaun Leonard. You can see more work by the film-makers on Chalkstreamfly.co.uk  and, of course, you can join the Wild Trout Trust here: WTT Membership Paul Gaskell (Trout in the Town Conservation Officer)

Porter Brook - Channel Habitat Improvement in De-Culverted City Centre Stream

There will be more pictures and video to come to document this bold project by Sheffield City Council to uncover a section of stream that used to live beneath a factory floor. They are in the process of creating a "pocket park" that will provide new flood-water storage (when the rivers are in spate) and an improved public park amenity (when the rivers are calm). The pocket park itself will be excavated out from the current high ground level (and a major construction project is underway at the moment to achieve this). The Wild Trout Trust were brought in to design in-channel features and riverbed morphology that would maxmise the improvements for the ecology of the stream - including for the prospects of a small and fragmented native population of wild brown trout. The site after uncovering the stream - but before the in-channel works Part way through the Pocket Park Construction - new gabion walls and flood defenses Channel with boulder clusters, log deflector-consoli