News

South Cumbria Rivers Trust is working with local landowners & Crosthwaite C E Primary School to make habitat improvements to a beck that runs through Crosthwaite. Currently the beck is a narrow underground culvert which has little value for wildlife and proves a barrier for migrating fish. The work will open up this channel, improving 250m2 of habitat both in river and along the beck margins, benefiting wildlife and the school. Alongside the opened beck a wildlife pond and dipping…

This unique, time-honored tradition of throwing flat stones across still water is back, as the All England Stone Skimming competition returns for its 10th year running! Join us on the 18th August for more fun than you can throw a stone at! Click here for further information and directions to the event.

On Wednesday 18th July and Saturday 4th August, SCRT will be running an event near Crosthwaite for people to come and discover the types of creatures that can be found in local becks and rivers. Great for families and great for people to find out more about SCRT and what we do. Please click here for more information about the event.

The Balsam Bashes are now well under way and a huge thank you to all the volunteers who have already been involved, we could not do it without you. Information about the upcoming events are below. Please, click here if you want to see further dates for the summer. Our final two work parties for the summer will be as follows:- Friday 24th August           Kentmere Tarn (north end) We’ll be checking over the areas we cleared balsam from in…

South Cumbria Rivers Trust and Becks to Bay are running a family fun activity day. Join us on Saturday 21st July at the Railway Meadows in Dalton-in-Furness (LA15 8DP) This is a fantastic opportunities for all the family to get up close to some of the creatures which live in our local becks. There’s also the chance to have a go at arts and crafts and learn about how you can look after you local beck. This free event is running alongside…

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…

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…

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…