AUTUMN 2020 NEWSLETTER WTT ANNUAL RAFFLE 17 DECEMBER Fabulous Prizes, See Page 32 Do Please Buy a Ticket Or Two
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AUTUMN 2020 NEWSLETTER WTT ANNUAL RAFFLE 17 DECEMBER Fabulous prizes, see page 32 Do please buy a ticket or two Sewage, slurry and abstraction • Pools for adult trout • Beavers Trout travellers • PLUS Updates from the conservation team You can help us to help wild trout in one easy cast... sign up a friend! There are far more people who love wild trout and the rivers in which they swim, than there are members of the Wild Trout Trust. So be a trouty champion... tell a fishing pal about the great work we do (and about our social events, the journal, the camaraderie of working on rivers) and sign him or her up as a member. It really does make a difference: the more members we have, the more work we can do and the more our voice matters. Challenge yourself to signing up a new member via our shop at www.wildtrout.org or by asking Christina to email or post a membership form ([email protected] / 023 9257 0985). Thank you. Reflections on the water... Shaun Leonard muses on WTT's past year or so hat we do is advise and give conservation volunteers and student Wpractical help to angling clubs, groups, putting articles in specialist conservation groups, landowners and printed press, local and national government bodies to improve habitat newspapers and TV and radio. The for wild trout and other wildlife. In WTT website, blog and various social our 2019/20 financial year, to the end media platforms speak to an audience of last April, we did 207 advisory site of thousands, updating on our projects visits, not a bad effort to say our year with partners and the latest science was clipped by the first wave of Covid. Volunteers hard at work interpreted for the layman. We finally Over 400km of river was walked by printed our annual journal, Salmo the conservation officers; in one case Trutta, in September and, for the first alone, in Cumbria, our man, Gareth time, also as an e-zine on our website. Pedley, walked and assessed around You’ll see elsewhere in this newsletter 70km of stream! Much of what we that we did (and continue to do) a did was in England, but we also fair bit of direct representation to did some great work in Ireland, Governments and their agencies on covering 35km of one club’s water what it is we see when our expert and helping them make plans for team is out and about. habitat improvement, which they’ve and encouraging marginal plants When Covid hit, we simply couldn’t started to implement. What we and wildlife while in Devon, a plan get out to do what it is we do. As I repeatedly saw and reported on with the Taw Fishing Club has seen write now, in October, we’re all back was impact from man-made barriers, considerable thinning of overshaded and fiercely busy, with advisory work low flows, dredging and agriculture, river reaches and use of the arisings all over (though many planned visits including soil and nutrients hitting to create woody habitat features in Ireland are impossible at the the river from runoff and livestock in the river. WTT advice has moment) and practical projects in trampling of banks. also involved development with various stages of preparation or Our advice continues to be acted landowners of sub-catchment-scale delivery from Cumbria to Cornwall. on; even allowing for very high water environmental plans, including Parting shots… thank you to all levels in the 19/20 winter and then with two large estates in Yorkshire of you who have supported WTT Covid, 70% of recipients responding and the creation of a farm cluster through the year, for example in so far have enacted some or all the in Dorset, all aiming to improve spending so much in our annual recommendations from the visit. So, agricultural practice and lessen auction. Our friends in the fisheries for example, small weirs have been impact on the land and streams. teams of the EA have been stalwart taken out, trees and boughs put in Practically, we ran 51 projects, throughout. And thank you too to my as habitat structures, fences put up varying in scale from instructional colleagues and the WTT trustees for to exclude livestock and fishery days doing good things with being absolute bricks when the yards management improved, with less volunteers through to river were really hard. rigorous tree lopping and fewer fish improvement with big machines. IMAGES stocked. In Hampshire, a WTT site This work included improving visit and report initiated dramatic habitat in a Kent river lacking water, Many of the images in this improvement to the habitat of 2km introduction of gravel and trees to newsletter pre-date the Covid-19 of the River Test in a project delivered improve habitat in Cambridgeshire, pandemic. Since late March, we by the Wessex Rivers Trust, EA and floodplain reconnection in Sussex have applied appropriate Covid WTT, including removal of nine weirs and the easing of fish migration in protocols to our field work, such as limited travel, small practical and bed raising with lots of gravel. Surrey. group sizes, social distancing, Extensive reaches of Yorkshire’s River We also did plenty of spreading personal hygiene and kit Ure and Wharfe have been fenced to of conservation messages, disinfection. exclude livestock, reducing soil input speaking at 30 events to anglers, AUTUMN 2020 WILD TROUT TRUST NEWS 3 NEWS SNIPPETS Our offer to host • Trials and triumphs: the state New book by 'virtual' angling club of UK’s rivers Nicolette Scourse AGMs • Fishing for wild trout • Informal question and answer Wildlife Encounters - With no apparent end to the session on things fishy, rivery and/ Southern Seas & Shores. restrictions on physical meetings, or fishing A zoologist’s personal encounters we expect that many angling clubs • A fun quiz for your members, with living diversity, journeying will be thinking about how best to again on things fishy, rivery and/ into animal lives on beaches, cliffs, handle their AGM this year. or fishing. desert and forest shores; in cold We would like to offer angling Contact Christina in the WTT oceans, warm seas and tropical clubs who are WTT members a office ([email protected]) if coral reefs; and in the skies above. hosted ‘Zoom’* meeting for their you would like to use this facility. Whilst the animals take the AGM. This will include a We will need to schedule the date starring roles, human lives, past and presentation or Q&A session with and time slot for the meeting and present, intertwine with theirs as one of our Conservation Officers allocate one of the WTT team to part of this living jigsaw. for 20-30 minutes at the start of be your presenter/ host. Available as both an e-book and the meeting, following which you Once the meeting is scheduled, printed copy, from Amazon and continue to use the Zoom facility we will give you details on how other booksellers. for as long as you need to cover to access it via Zoom which you other agenda items. The WTT CO can pass to your members. Keeping in touch need not be present for the whole Please give us as much notice meeting. as possible! Print and postage is expensive, Our Zoom account allows us to so to keep costs down, we host meetings of any duration for *WHAT IS ZOOM? occasionally email members in up to 100 people. We can record between printed publications Zoom is a very widely used the meeting and send you the file when we have important news or to video conferencing facility (it so that you can load it onto your let you know about an event. can also be audio only) that website, Google drive or wherever If you don’t currently receive emails is accessed by a PC/Mac, phone you wish. from us but would like to do so, or tablet via the internet. We will happily tailor the please contact Christina via office@ Information such as photos, topic of our presentation to wildtrout.org. We also use our PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets your interests, but here are website, Facebook, Twitter and and documents can be shared some examples: Instagram to share news and topics with the participants as well as • The work of the WTT on of interest. Members-only events are discussions, as if you were in a managing and improving communicated via email, and in our room together. river habitat printed publications if time allows. Signal crayfish impacts on fish is the first study to account and and invertebrates in upland streams effectively control for changes in other parameters that might New research from multiple small nities changed markedly in response influence the results, like habitat upland streams has shown that to signal crayfish invasion, with degradation. It demonstrates that non-native signal crayfish can have sensitive, less-mobile invertebrates widespread and long-term a negative impact on bottom living most affected. The impact upon trout ecological disruption is occurring fish species and invertebrates, is more complex. Salmonid fry in upland streams invaded by signal comparable to more lowland (mostly trout in the study) were crayfish, but that the impacts studies. For example, bullhead significantly less abundant in streams may take many years to be fully appear to have disappeared from with signal crayfish, but larger trout expressed, reflecting the time it takes two study streams invaded by sig- were more abundant in crayfish- for crayfish to fully establish within nal crayfish. Invertebrate commu- invaded streams.