Scoping out Habitat Opportunities in Sheffield's Porter Brook

Jerome and I scoping out bits of the Porter Brook - finding a big weir

Continuing with the recent theme of the radical deculverting and habitat improvement work on Sheffield's Porter Brook - here is a quick update on a day spent walking and talking about potential further opportunities. The morning and some of the afternoon was spent in the company of Jerome Masters (EA Fisheries) in a combination of searching out potential sites to assess and then discussing options along with Sam Thorn and Jack Foxall of Sheffield City Council.

The series of short sections might be possible to combine with some more planned deculverting work on another City Centre Tributary (The Sheaf) for further improvements to the connectivity of the Don Catchment - and also the quality and variety of available river corridor habitat.

It will be my job in the coming weeks to come up with a variety of optional scenarios for each of the sites. Depending on the various constraints of either funding, available surrounding land and existing infrastructure - there could be several options for each site. Some of these could be long term aspirations (requiring significant funding and local stakeholder buy-in). Others might be much more simple and relatively inexpensive to achieve.

Hopefully, when taken together, the combined benefits that can accrue from these interventions might just make life a bit easier and more sustainable into the future for our urban river corridor flora and fauna.

Previous work re-shaping the Riverbed of the Porter Brook to improve habitat

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