September 2024

Words from the Chair

For the BACP staff team, September is a month of change as we say goodbye to Zoe Hancock for 12 months and hello to Holly Ellis.

Zoe has been the mainstay of BACP for nearly a decade, having started as the Bristol Avon Catchment Co-ordinator in 2014. Under her guidance, the BACP has gone from strength to strength and she has supported all our partners as our strategic programmes have grown both in number and extent. We will certainly miss her, but she has not gone far and our paths are sure to cross. Zoe is joining the Bath & North East Somerset Council team on secondment as the Green Infrastructure Programme Manager – Connecting Landscapes and Catchments.

I would like to warmly welcome Holly to our team - for more about Holly and her role see the article below.

Richard Cresswell
Chair, BACP

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Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership Fund Opens!

We are pleased to announce that the Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership Fund is open for applications until Friday 18th October 2024 at 23:59.

The Fund is to support projects that improve the water environment around the Bristol Avon catchment. It can fund work such as, walkover surveys, data collection, habitat improvements or community engagement and project development. Bids to the Fund have the most chance of being successful if they deliver on one or more of the BACP aims. These are:

• Enhance people’s enjoyment and connection with the water environment
• Improve water quality
• Restore biodiversity and ecological connectivity
• Adapt and build resilience to a changing climate

Further details on our four aims can be found in the BACP Catchment Plan.

Both the Main Grants Scheme and Community Grants Scheme will be open.

The current funding criteria and guidance can be found on the BACP website; please go to the Catchment Partnership Fund and how to apply webpages for more information. Please read these documents thoroughly before submitting your application. We are especially keen to support applications that demonstrate engagement and support with underrepresented groups in the environmental sector.

If you have a project that you would like to discuss before submitting your application, or if you have any questions about the Fund, please contact info@bristolavoncatchment.co.uk and Jack Bishop (Catchment Partnership Officer) can arrange a time to talk with you. There is approximately £20,000 available in this round to be distributed to successful projects.

Spotlight - New member of the BACP team

Holly Ellis is the latest addition of the Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership team. Holly has joined the Wessex Water Apprenticeship programme and will be working with us as a Catchment Practitioner Apprentice. This is a 5-year apprenticeship where she will be studying for an Environmental Management BSc Degree at the University of the West of England.

Following completion of her A-levels, Holly worked with young people in an Alternative Education Provision. She has also participated in volunteering roles at both an alpaca farm and a local chicken rescue.

Holly has always had a keen interest in the environment and is excited to get stuck in with her new role and getting involved with the BACP team. She will also be working with the Dorset Catchment Partnerships for two days a week which will help to share learning and collaboration between Catchment Partnerships in the Wessex region.

Holly will be involved with various aspects of BACP work, which we expect to expand across her apprenticeship. To begin with, this will include support with the BACP’s communications, data, and evidence requirements, community engagement and supporting the running of the Catchment Partnership Fund.

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Catchment news

RiverHub Goes Live

Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART), Wessex Water and RiskAware have developed an exciting new web portal, RiverHub, displaying the records taken by citizen scientists on the state of their rivers in the Bristol Avon catchment.

RiverHub currently features citizen science data provided by BART beacons, River Detectives, and Riverfly monitors from across the Bristol Avon catchment. Over the next few months, there will be further data sets added, showing more information about the health of our rivers, including data provided by Wessex Water.

The information on the portal allows anyone from any background to access and interpret the data.
Find out more about it here. Alternatively, visit their website here.

Boosting Flood Protection in Chippenham

Wessex Water are investing £2 million towards reducing the flood risk to homes in Chippenham and protecting the River Avon.

They will be installing a 10-metre deep storage tank, sunk below the ground. This will add extra capacity to the sewer network, preventing the system from being overwhelmed and potentially spilling over onto nearby properties. It will also play a vital role in reducing the number of times storm overflows operate automatically during times when there are high volumes of rainwater.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of January 2025.

Communicate 2024 - New Connections for Nature

The Natural History Consortium is hosting its annual Communicate conference for its 20th anniversary from the 26th-28th November. The sessions will be held in London, Bristol, Manchester and online.

Explore the programme and book your ticket here.

RiverBlitz 2024 Results

Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART) have published the results of RiverBlitz 2024, marking the 8th year the citizen science programme has taken place. An amazing 133 volunteers participated throughout the Bristol Avon catchment, with a total of 202 water quality samples taken.

The data collected through RiverBlitz provides a snapshot of the nutrient levels in local rivers, along with information on the sample location, signs of pollution and Invasive Non-Native species, for a week in July. This data will help to identify areas in need of future conservation work to improve water quality.

This year’s results indicated that 68% of sites sampled had high nutrient loads, while only 3.4% of sites sampled had low nutrient loading.

All the collected data from previous RiverBlitz events, including this one, can be found on an interactive map on the BART website.

Read the full report here, and visit the RiverBlitz data explorer here.

Wessex citizen science

There are two upcoming online citizen science workshops you can attend as part of Wessex Citizen Science Pilot that is being organised by The Natural History Consortium. More details about the workshop are below:

Tuesday 1st October (1-2pm): Citizen Science at a landscape-scale
An “in conversation” comparison of the Chilterns National Landscapes and Purbeck Heaths National Nature Reserve.
Reserve your place here.

Monday 21st October (12-1pm):
This will be a workshop investigating how Citizen Science can support the implementation of the Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) across Wessex.
Reserve your place here.

Citizen science showcase

The Natural History Consortium will also be running a citizen science showcase as part of their Wessex Citizen Science Pilot. This will be a week-long celebration of Citizen Science taking place across Wessex, with aims to support organisations with greater positive coverage of local projects.

You can get involved through: delivering an in-person event such as a training session for your project, delivering an online session sharing your project, engagement with local media about your project, or creating new online content such as a reel/video or blog for launching during the showcase.

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Wider news

Pharmaceuticals are polluting England's National Parks

The University of York has published a study that has found pharmaceuticals in river water at 52 out of 54 locations monitored across all ten national parks in England.

The study found that pharmaceuticals were at potentially harmful levels to fish, invertebrates and algae in the Peak District, Exmoor, Lake District, South Downs and the New Forest.

This is also a concern for the health of local swimmers, as the occurrence of some antimicrobials are above safe levels. They believe this could be a contributor to the global antimicrobial resistance crisis.

Read the full article here.

Improving water quality in the North York Moors

DEFRA have published a farming blog explaining funding that was allocated to projects within Fryup Dale. This is part of the Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) programme.

This funding allowed several projects to undergo works, such as: pond restoration, fencing, wetland creation and more.

Read the full blog here.

Crayfish plague

Rivers in the Wye catchment, have been found to have crayfish plague. Crayfish plague is fatal to all native crayfish.

It can be spread through clothing and animals entering different waterways. People are being urged to follow the ‘Check, Clean, Dry’ protocol, as well as reporting any deceased crayfish spotted to help monitor the spread.

Find the full article here.

Watershed Pollution Map

Watershed Investigations has published their Water Pollution Map which brings together 120 data sets to help better highlight at a national scale the pressures on rivers, lakes, groundwater and seas across. The data included ranges from river health, bathing water health, historic landfill sites, intensive farming, heavy industry and much more.

This map will be continually added to, with existing data updated once a year.

Find the pollution map here.

Reintroducing oysters

2000 oysters have been grown and reintroduced into the Solent to encourage back marine life. The benefits of oysters range from filtering chemicals and pollutants, forming reefs and removing carbon from the environment.

The River Lemon Partnership Project to Improve Passage

The River Lemon Partnership Project to Improve Passage (Lemon PPIP) has been formed as a collaboration between the Westcountry Rivers Trust, Environment Agency and the National Trust.

They aim to improve barriers to fish migration down the River Lemon in Devon, through improving fish passage and natural function to the river. This project also aims to raise public and community awareness of river ecosystem management, fishery conservation and the environmental goals of the project.

See more about their work here.

Small freshwater habitats guidance

Freshwater Habitats Trust has published guidance on introducing small freshwater habitats into local nature recovery strategies. This guidance includes: how they’re important, appropriate targets when using the recovery strategies & assessment methods of the habitat.

Find the full guidance here.

Dry day spills

The EA has published an article on dry day spills. They define a dry day spill as when a storm overflow is used on a ‘dry day’ – which is defined as no rainfall above 0.25mm on that day and the preceding 24 hours.

The article contains details of: what a dry day spill is, how the Environment Agency investigates them, and what is being done to reduce them.