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04 October 2010
Given the treasured nature of the Lake District, you might hope and expect the water and its surrounding habitat to be of pristine quality. Unfortunately this is not the case. Our natural waters, including those running into Coniston Water and the River Crake, and their many indigenous species are threatened by environmental change and degradation. This is why the Coniston & Crake Partnership was formed.
If you were at Torver Schoolroom in May, you would have heard members of the Partnership talking to local residents about “ Battling Aliens and Electrocuting Fish”. While not an entirely accurate summary of our work, the title does reflect something of its nature: we struggle to control the number of Non-Native Invasive Species along the Crake and its tributaries, carry out beck surveys with the agreement of land-owners to assess water-quality (on the whole, fairly reassuring for those of us who are drinking those becks from our taps every day!), and in this year’s drought, electro-fished Yew Tree Tarn near Coniston to rescue its population of native wild brown trout – an irreplaceable gene pool.
The problems are very close to home. Numbers of salmon and sea-trout running the River Crake have dropped to such low levels in the last few years that the Environment Agency have put a complete ban on the taking of salmon in the river until such time as their spawning levels recover. Coniston Water contains a population of arctic char that has survived from the ice-age; unfortunately its numbers are in decline due to over-enrichment of the lake with phosphates, and other environmental impacts.
If you would like to find out more, or even pull your wellies on and come and see what’s in your beck, the Coniston and Crake Partnership is a new group of local volunteers living in Torver, Coniston, Water Yeat, Blawith, Lowick, Colton…..in fact, all the communities along the Crake Valley, from the mountains to the sea. We work with the guidance of the Trust and its associates, including the Freshwater Biological Association and the Environment Agency, to play a local role in preserving our waters so that they can continue to support our irreplaceable native species…. otter, kingfisher, dipper, char, heron, sea-trout and brown trout, salmon, eels, lamprey, mayfly, and the aquatic invertebrates that underpin the food-chain.
Among other activities, our community volunteers carry out biological sampling at 20 sites on the becks running into Coniston Water and the River Crake to help identify the health of the beck and its invertebrates, and with the help of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology we’re monitoring the levels of phosphates in the lake. Phosphates are the pollutants that contribute most to toxic algal blooms like the one that cancelled the Great North Swim recently. And in our catchment, they come largely from sewage and detergents. Most washing-powders are phosphate-free these days, but what dishwasher tablets do you use? Many contain 30% phosphate, 8 grams of it in every tablet, although one major local supermarket’s Value range has no phosphates at all, and is the cheapest in the shop. You can help to keep our waters clear in all sorts of ways – and cutting out phosphate pollution is an important one.
Earlier this year we carried out a survey of Gawthwaite Beck down to its confluence with Langholme Beck above Lowick, …..did you know salmon spawn up there, and there are lampreys in the beck? Or that although the European Eel has declined by 96% since the Seventies, there still seem to be quite a few around our patch …. and unfortunately one or two problems, too… it’s amazing some of the stuff that goes down the sink…or the septic tank….. and it all ends up in the beck.
So what’s in your beck? If you are interested in taking part in a beck survey on your local beck in the Coniston & Crake catchment, please get in touch. Or if you’d like us to come and talk to your organisation, Parish Council, or W.I., we’d be happy to do that…. And we’ll let you know which supermarket has the cheap, phosphate-free dishwasher tablets!
For more information, please contact the Trust Manager.
