10 WEEKS IN! How time flies! Over the last few weeks I have been doing loads to progress the projects I mentioned in my last blog post. These are the Winster and Gilpin habitat improvement project and the Freshwater Pearl Mussel BIFFA funded project. I have also managed to get out and about to help Mike West a few times on his Heritage Lottery Funded Coniston and Crake project and it has been great to watch and learn from an…
It’s that time of year again when we start to see the emergence of Himalayan Balsam, so lets get ‘Bashing’! We have developed a programme to target the priority balsam areas; and we now need your help for the following dates and places: Many thanks to Ken Taylor and all our local co-ordinators for your fantastic contribution to helping tackle balsam across South Cumbria; and of course thank you to all of you, we couldn’t do it without you. Please…
Hi everyone! I’m 6 weeks in now so it’s time for my third blog post. At the moment a large amount of my time is being spent on two projects. These are the project in the Winster and Gilpin catchment and the Freshwater Pearl Mussel project, so they will be the focus of this blog post. The Winster and Gilpin project is a 3-4 year habitat improvement project with the aim to identify and investigate issues in the catchments, and…
We are currently conducting a research trial alongside the Freshwater Biological Association (FBA) looking into juvenile habitats and the oxygen levels in the hyporheic zone. This is the region beneath and alongside a stream bed, where there is a mixture of shallow groundwater and surface water. Dissolved oxygen (DO) within the hyporheic (gravel interstitial spaces) zone is crucial to the survival of juvenile mussels which bury themselves under the surface of the gravel until they are sufficiently large to emerge and begin…
Another two weeks have passed and that is my first month at South Cumbria Rivers Trust completed already! How time flies! Following a great Easter weekend spent exploring the Lake District it was back to work on Tuesday. First item on the agenda was a site visit with Mike Sturt to assess an on-line Mill pond near Cartmel that has become excessively silted. The pond is currently a fishery and was created many years ago by damming the Burn’s Beck/Hill Mill…
Hi everyone, I’m Matt, the new project officer at South Cumbria Rivers Trust (SCRT). As a new starter I thought I would start this blog to take you through some of the work I get involved in, and what is involved in the day to day role of a project officer here at SCRT. Apologies this blog hasn’t been started sooner, as I started 2 weeks ago but I have been kept busy by the work and I have done…
World Water Day, on 22 March every year, is about focusing attention on the importance of water. This year’s theme, ‘Nature for Water’, explores nature-based solutions (NBS) to the water challenges we face in the 21st century. Find out more by visiting worldwaterday.org Restoring forests, grasslands and natural wetlands, reconnecting rivers to floodplains, creating buffers of vegetation along water courses – these are all examples of NBS that help the management of water availability and quality. Most NBS, including…
Thank you to all the amazing volunteers who helped in last weekend’s #GBSpringClean👍 Well done! We’re sorry that there were a few hiccups at the meeting point and some volunteers didn’t get the opportunity to join in, our apologies. #ZeroWasteKendal Thames21Keep Britain Tidy #KentCatchmentPartnership #plastic #pollution#Cumbria Did you know that 80% of marine litter comes from land? As part of Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean weekend, we’ll be walking the pathways near the River Kent, picking up litter before it gets blown into the…
The Freshwater Habitats Trust #SpawnSurvey is off to a great start – thanks to everyone who has already sent in records of frogs and frog spawn, have you seen any in the Lake District yet? A great excuse to get outside and get involved with this fab citizen science project, enter your sightings here: https://freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/projects/pondnet/spawnsurvey2018/!
Thanks to Environment Agency NW teams for braving the snow and ice and helping to plant trees to create a riparian buffer strip along a section of the river Brathay this week! This is part of our BiffaAward Freshwater Pearl Mussel Project ❄️☃️ Well done!