February 2025
Words from the Chair
In this edition of the BACP Newsletter, it is good to see links to a number of published reports indicating a general trend of improvement in some aspects of water quality in our rivers. However, we cannot afford to lower our vigilance, and I welcome the tremendous work done by our Riverfly volunteers and others who are monitoring how water invertebrates are doing in our watercourses.
Despite improvements in some parts of the catchment, there is still great pressure and damage being caused, particularly by dirty run-off (e.g. from roads and building sites). If you see this happening, please report the locations to either the local authority or the Environment Agency. If left unchecked, this can quickly undo much of the good work being done by volunteers around the catchment.
And talking of good work, I encourage you to take 5 minutes to watch this excellent short film by Simon Hunter and the Bristol Avon Rivers Trust. It shows some of the problems, but highlights the many positive things that can and are being done to restore our rivers.
Finally, a reminder to sign the petition below.
Dr Richard Cresswell MBE
Chair, Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership
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Catchment News
Petition reminder and email template: Call on EDF to protect the Severn Estuary’s Fish
As announced in our January Newsletter, a petition has been launched by The Rivers Trust and Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART) to demand that fish protection measures are fitted on the massive cooling water intakes of the new Hinkley Power Station (HPC).
Please sign this petition here. Please pass this message on.
You can take further action by sending an email to your MP or The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, or Secretary of State for the Environment, Steve Reed. To do so, you can find an email template here.
Riverfly monitoring reports
Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (RMI) data are now available from BART. Volunteers took 350 samples from the River Frome, and an additional 110 from the Cam and Midford Brooks. Volunteers analysed macroinvertebrate diversity, allowing BART to identify site locations which held the lowest scores and that require further investigation.
These data are now available on RiverHub and you can read more about how the information is used here.
Credit: Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART)
New Chief Executive announced for the Avon Wildlife Trust
Avon Wildlife Trust are pleased to announce the appointment of Leah McNally as their new Chief Executive Officer from March 2025. BACP is very much looking forward to working with Leah and the team at Avon Wildlife Trust moving forwards.
Read more here.
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Events and webinars
The Festival of Nature 2025
From 6th-15th of June, the Natural History Consortium will be running their annual Festival of Nature. This is the UK’s largest free celebration of the natural world and the theme for this year will be water.
Read more about this event here.
The Riverfly Partnership – Latest developments webinar
The Riverfly Partnership are running a webinar on 5th March, presented by Trine Bregstein from the Freshwater Biological Association (FBA). The webinar will include case studies of Riverfly monitoring, new modes of monitoring, as well as recent work of the FBA over the last 18 months.
Register for the event here.
Severn Estuary Spring Clean 2025
The Severn Estuary Spring Clean will be taking place again this March – April. The Severn Estuary Partnership is asking for litter picking groups, individuals, community groups and businesses to reduce the flow of litter into our seas and #SpruceUpTheSevern!
The River Restoration Centre is hosting its 26th Annual Network Conference on 1st – 2nd April 2025 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Brighton Metropole.
Read the programme and book online here.
Freshwater Biological Association Annual Scientific Meeting
On 25th June 2025, the FBA are putting on their Annual Scientific Meeting. It will include keynote speakers from a variety of different organisations as well as showcasing the research and practice of other FBA members. It will be held at Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) Clifton Campus.
Find out more about this event here.
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Wider News
State of the water environment: long-term trends in river quality
The Environment Agency have published a report presenting the results of long-term monitoring at 135 river sites across England.
Results showed that orthophosphate, nitrite, ammonia and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), concentrations were greatly reduced between 1990 – 2023. Furthermore, concentrations of all dissolved metals have substantially decreased between 1990 – 2023.
Read the full report here.
Repairing and restoring Britain’s rivers
On a recent episode of the Rewilding the World podcast, Ben Goldsmith speaks to Mike Blackmore from the Wessex Rivers Trust. They discuss river restoration, human modification of rivers and more.
Take a listen to the podcast here.
Environment Agency Chief Regulator’s report 2023-24
A report has been published by the Environment Agency (EA) on the environmental performance of businesses and activities regulated in 2023-24. This includes the monitoring of serious pollution incidents from water and sewerage companies, and farming activities as well as compliance with water abstraction licences. Within this report, there is a case study explaining how the EA have been using remote sensing data to pinpoint areas of environmental risk or harm.
Read the full report here.
Improving dairy farm groundwater quality
Dairy co-operative First Milk and Nestlé Waters are forming a partnership project working with 30 dairy farmers throughout Pembrokeshire, Wales. They will be using regenerative farming practices including rotational grazing of dairy herds, increasing sward grassland diversity and rooting depth, increasing soil organic matter to reduce soil compaction as well as improving water infiltration. This project aims to capture an additional 250m litres of groundwater a year.
Read more about this project here.
New CaSTCo website
Catchment Systems Thinking Cooperative (CaSTCo) was created to build the UK’s first national framework for monitoring that better supports communities, decision-makers, scientists, and industry to be able to use citizen science data meaningfully. They have recently launched a new website, which consists of project case studies detailing different methods of monitoring and a holistic collaborative monitoring plan.
Find out more about this here.