|
24 June 2010
A brief outline of the types of thing SCRT does:
- Surveys and research to formulate ideas that will help conserve and improve our aquatic environment
- Formation of ideas into projects, taking best advice and consulting with all parties (See projects)
- Procure funding for projects
- Carry out the habitat restoration projects and monitor the results
- Education of the local population and visitors about our natural heritage of rivers and lakes, and how and why they need protection
- Lobbying to ensure that future developments and activities will not further degrade our aquatic environment.
Habitat surveys
To manage and improve our waters, we need to know where they all are, and to understand them.
1) Walk over surveys
The aim here is basic documentation and mapping of the river and features, plus photographs, and including local knowledge and history of the river if available.
Things to be assessed and recorded are erosion, natural or due to livestock, riparian habitat natural or grazed, amount of shading, amount of in-stream cover, rocks, weed, woody debris etc, the limits of migration and spawning.
Advice from River Trusts elsewhere is that the biggest benefit in the short term comes from:
- Fencing and the creation of buffer strips to limit the impact or agricultural livestock on the watercourse, and to create a richer, more natural and healthy river corridor.
- The removal of manmade obstacles to migration, wires, culverts etc.
- The identification of these opportunities requires no particular skills, just enthusiasm amongst volunteers to get out there and look, and talk to the landowners.
We stay in close contact with the Environment Agency during this process and make full use of their skills and knowledge.
The output from the walk over surveys are:
- An inventory of our waters, with maps, photographs and descriptions
- Habitat improvement ideas eg. Fencing and buffer strips, obstruction removal, improvement of in-stream habitat etc.
- Identification of locations to follow on water quality and juvenile salmonid surveys.
2) Water quality surveys
Water quality is of profound importance. While the EA do carry out a programme of water quality monitoring, the locations are limited. The Trust is developing a capacity to carry out water quality analysis eg. at specific points to address questions raised by the walk over surveys, and on a regular basis to monitor trends.
Various techniqueshave been employed such as measuring temperature, conductivity, oxygen, and pH, nutrient analysis, chlorophyll and bacterial counts in the water and on the stones. BMWP/Kick sample technique for invertebrates etc.
3) Juvenile salmonid surveys
Monitoring the populations of juvenile salmonids provides excellent data to help manage the rivers. Without good data about fry and parr populations we will be ‘shooting in the dark’ when it comes to defining the priority projects.
The EA do occasional surveys and this data is available, however these are very sparse in terms of both locations and frequency.
River Bela work party
