West Country River Trust Talk
Thank you to all those who were able to make it to the talk at Rosuick Farm on Tuesday evening, 2nd July. Twenty-nine attended - it was great to see so many of you there . Thank you also, as ever, to Dave Oates and his family for their support and to our three excellent speakers, namely:
Stephen Webster from the Environment Agency and the two Annas from the Westcountry Rivers Trust – Anna Crane who leads the CSI (Citizen Science Investigation) project and Anna Seal who is the engagement officer. For more information please follow the link: Westcountry CSI - Westcountry Rivers Trust https://wrt.org.uk (wrt.org.uk)
For those who weren’t able to make it and hopefully as a useful reminder to those who were, a short summary of the content of the presentations will be included in the next newsletter.
Following the talks, there was a group discussion where everyone had the opportunity to share their thoughts on our priorities and the way forward and from that we have distilled four questions for you:
Are you interested in attending Riverfly training?
If you have not already signed up with the Westcountry Rivers Trust Citizen Science Investigation, would you like to do so?
If you have already signed up with the WRT CSI, would you like to continue to test one or more streams?
Are you interested in recording soil runoff on the prospective WRT "Mudspotter" app?
Please send your replies to this email address.mailto: wgstreamtesting@gmail.com
The group discussion started with Maggie Freegard providing figures which illustrated that several streamtesters had stopped surveying and submitting results - people were possibly losing interest, wondering what use their results were being put to….
Someone pointed out that it was quite a lonely occupation and they did feel a bit isolated sometimes; it was agreed that better communication between streamtesters is needed and possibly surveying together/ in pairs ?
Many thought that the parameters tested didn’t really give a proper assessment of the true health of the river/stream. Invertebrate life, it was agreed, would be a better way to assess health. One member who has a wealth of experience testing for invertebrate life in local streams recommended the Riverfly Partnership. There was a lot of enthusiasm for this and several people expressed an interest in being trained in the sampling, identifying and recording of invertebrate life. Using this method is more involved than the WRT CSI survey method, but therefore possibly more interesting – take a look at the link below (and if you have time scroll down and watch Trine Bregstein’s brilliant presentation). About us — The Riverfly Partnership (riverflies.org)
So, to summarise, the ambition is to regularly, reliably monitor the health of the rivers/streams in and around The Lizard and thereby identify any problems. This may be overly ambitious and perhaps we will need to scale back but, initially, it would be helpful to receive your replies to the questions above.
We know already, anecdotally, that soil washing off fields, particularly those with potatoes, daffodils or maize, in heavy rain is an issue in our area. It seems that to help the EA prevent such incidences we will need to record the impact on the receiving river/stream as well as the source of the flow. Alongside photos and films of muddy water, perhaps we should consider trialling WRT’s Mudspotter app ?
Apart from soil wash, some small sewage works can also affect water quality, so this may be another issue to consider.
Thank you again to all those attended and for all your offers of help; please do be in touch with your replies and to share your thoughts on any of the above.
