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Trust Catchment Manager's Update
Alison Baker
With the fishing season over in most parts of the District and monitoring by means of electrofishing completed, the winter months are a time to evaluate the information and to consider the health of the rivers and fish populations. The information is fed back into the long-term stats and both short and long term trends are considered. As part of this process the Trust continues to input into the national strategies and planning coming from Marine Scotland as part of the Conservation Regulations for migratory species and aims of the Wild Fisheries Reform. In addition to what may be considered direct fisheries management planning, the Trust also has to work closely with other agencies such as SEPA and Forestry Commission to try and ensure that the decision making by these bodies is complementary to our planning and there is an integrated approach – which is not always easy!
With the development of funding for wider catchment approaches to fisheries management, the Trust now has dedicated teams in the Allan Water, Almond and Avon catchments and this has meant that the funding received from the Forth District Salmon Fishery Board can be used more widely. For the first time we have been able to undertake a wide ranging redd counting exercise on the upper rivers and this has provided additional information on the geographic range of migratory fish and provided a better insight into the habitat and issues in some areas. It also demonstrates the amazing ability of salmon to find their way to parts of our river systems where there has been doubt over accessibility. Whilst catches appear to be generally down in the District again this season, the evidence collected would lead towards more optimism. There does seem however to be a trend which is also reflected across Scotland of a later than normal autumn run.
We are pleased to welcome Jamie, Lorna, Scott and Jo B to the RiverLife Team. They bring new expertise to the Trust to deliver this exciting project within the Almond & Avon catchments.
Catchment Manager - Alison Baker
Senior Biologist - Jo Girvan
Biologist - Sylvian Barry
Project Developement Officer - Jonathan Louis
Project Officer (Allan Water Improvement Project) - Lawrence Belleni
Project Officer (Trossachs Water Vole Project) - Ryan Greenwood
Project Officer (Forth Invasive Non Native Species Programme) - Amy Fergusson
Ecology/Morphology - TrexEcology (Tommy McDermott)
Financial/Office Manager - Jo Bruce
RiverLife: Almond & Avon
Programme Coordinator - Kate Comins
Capital Projects Manager - Scott Robertson
Community Engagement Officer - Jamie Ormiston
Volunteer Coordinator - Lorna Oldershaw
Project assistant - Currently vacant
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RiverLife: Almond & Avon
Kate Comins
Work is now underway on the delivery phase of the ambitious RiverLife Almond and Avon Project, which aims to reconnect wildlife and communities to their local rivers in the Almond and Avon catchments.
RiverLife Team
To support the physical improvements planned, three new members of the RiverLife team are now in place with a fourth being recruited early next year to work with the Trust staff to deliver the programme of works.
Jamie Ormiston joins the RFFT from The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland based at Edinburgh Zoo where he has been an Education Officer for four years. After initially delivering the public talks and lectures in the zoo he then went on to set up and run the Wild About Scotland outreach project, visiting over 300 schools in two years. Livingston born and bred, Jamie will be the Community Engagement Officer for the RiverLife Project and already has lots of exciting plans to involve and engage the local communities in the RiverLife Project.
Lorna Oldershaw is the Volunteer Coordinator for the project and has previously worked for a range of environmental organisations including The Conservation Volunteers and the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority. Since joining RFFT, Lorna has been out and about with local community groups, discussing ideas and spreading the word about volunteering with RiverLife. As part of her role Lorna will also be responsible for coordination and delivery of the community training programmes which form part of the RiverLife Project. To be kept up to date with volunteering opportunities, register your interest here or follow @MyRiverLife on Twitter!
Scott Robertson from Energetic Project Management will be overseeing the contract management services for the RiverLIfe Project. Scott has been involved in several high risk river based projects and comes with a wealth of experience in contract and procurement management. Over the next couple of months Scott will be working with both West Lothian Council and City of Edinburgh Council to develop procurement routes for the RiverlIfe contracts.
Ribble Rivers Trust Visit
Jamie and Lorna are recently back from a two day visit to the Ribble Catchment where they had the opportunity to share good practice with other Trusts undertaking similar projects. After a tour of the urban river regeneration works in Burnley they then discussed the RiverLife project with representatives from Ribble Rivers Trust, West Cumbria Rivers Trust and River Severn Trust who are all developing their own river improvement works over the next four years. They shared ideas for classroom activities, community engagement and best practice for setting up community groups. When discussing community engagement, the team were treated to a look at the RRT River Table. This a table top river simulator designed to look at the geomorphology of rivers and how they behave to different regeneration works. Jamie and Lorna were so impressed they have put in an order for one to be made especially for RFFT!
Small Grants Scheme
As part of the RiverLife: Almond & Avon project, there is a small grants fund totalling £40,000 which is intended to support individuals, organisations, and communities seeking assistance with their own projects which also meet RiverLife: Almond & Avon’s objectives.
Funds will be allocated over each of the four years of RiverLife: Almond & Avon in roughly equal amounts, but this is not an absolute requirement and the assessment panel will have some discretion to bring funding forward should there be excellent applications totalling more than £10,000 in any one year. Equally, the assessment panel reserves the right not to allocate all the money available in any given year if there should be insufficient applications of the required quality.
It is expected that individual grants will normally be in the range £250 - £5000 although there are no set limits and there will be up to two application windows each year. It is hoped to launch the scheme early next year so keep an eye out for our press release when it is launched.
RiverLife is on Twitter!
Follow us @MyRiverLife for project updates, on location photos and general river related posts. Use #MyRiverLife on your photos and show us your favourite ‘RiverLife: Almond & Avon’ places and wildlife.
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Genetics Study - Forth Returning Adults Project
Jo Girvan
Our genetics project aims to collect scale samples from adult salmon caught in the Rivers Forth, Teith, Devon and Allan Water. The samples go off for genetic analysis at UHI to determine whether fish have returned to their natal rivers or strayed into neighbouring rivers.
We are immensely grateful to all the anglers who helped us collect scale samples for this project, and we are now getting near to our target. We simply could not complete the project without this help, and so for this reason we awarded two prizes at the recent Forth District Salmon Fishery Board Annual Meeting. The first prize of a £50 Angling Active voucher went to George Mackintosh for collecting the most samples. He has so far provided us with 24 samples from the Allan Water. The second prize was a bottle of Macallan malt whiskey which was donated by our friends at The Keepers of the Quaich. George pulled a name out of the hat at the meeting, and the winner was Iain Lindsay who fishes at Cambusmore. We hope to continue collecting samples next year and to get some more prizes on the go, so anyone who would like to help, get in touch and we will send you out some sample tubes.
This genetics work will lead us into a future project looking at ‘numbers of breeders’ which will aim to determine how many adults are involved in producing local juvenile communities. The ideal is to have a large number of parents involved so that genetic heterogeneity (and therefore genetic and physical fitness) is maximised. Because a small number of adults can fill a spawning burn with juveniles, we can’t always assess the health of the adult population by counting juveniles. This genetics project will help provide us with unequivocal data on the numbers of returning adults involved in breeding.
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Allan Water Improvement Project
Lawrence Belleni
New Webpage
The Allan Water Improvement Project (AWIP) has recently launched its new webpage on the River Forth Fisheries Trust website. The webpage details what the aims of the project are, organisations that support the project, and what work is being done in the catchment. As part of the page there is a link to an interactive map, and along with the map, there is a scroll on the left-hand side of the page that will take you through each project and pictures of the work carried out by AWIP. We hope to add more to the webpage soon including report summaries of projects and links to associated websites and information. The link to the new webpage is below, and I hope you find the information useful and the layout appealing to use.
AWIP webpage: http://www.fishforth.co.uk/rfft/projects-2/allan-water-improvement-project/
Intern on the Allan
Alex Williams will be joining AWIP as an intern for one day per week to help deliver Natural Flood Management (NFM) Projects on the Allan Water Catchment, and learn skills in identifying NFM opportunities; putting together project proposals; and landowner engagement. Alex graduated with a MSc Environmental Protection and Management degree at Edinburgh University and is working with support from the Esk Rivers and Fisheries Trust to submit a PhD proposal in 2017.
Allan Water woodland
The Allan Water river in its middle and upper mainstem reaches are lacking bankside tree cover and complex riparian vegetation over large parts of the river. Trees are very important to providing fish cover; riverfly habitat; and to help kickstart change and habitat creation when they fall into watercourses. For example, when a tree falls in a river, it collects sediments immediately behind it forming a bar, and forces flow through a smaller section of channel creating flow diversity and pool formation. This change leads to the creation of new adult and juvenile habitats that benefit fishing and future fish populations.
This summer we had spent a lot of time putting together a SRDP Forestry Grant Scheme application, which required vegetation and soil surveys and wider consultation with government organisations and neighbouring landowners. The application was successful and the land occupier has been awarded the contract to plant 1ha of Alder woodland by the Allan Water. In addition to this, we are awaiting an outcome of an application to the Woodland Trust to do some bankside planting to help control bank erosion on the Allan. The Allan Water river banks are high throughout the middle reaches and consist of sandy material, which are prone to erosion. As a result, banksides slipping into the river and releasing sediments that smother the riverbed are common. The planting of trees at the base of these banks to capture the sediments from bank slips will hopefully reduce the amount of sediment reaching the riverbed and will stabilise the banks, which will be of great benefit to the river in this reach. Therefore, hopefully there will be some more trees coming to the Allan Water banksides soon.
If you would like to be involved in volunteer planting days please get in touch by emailing lawrence l.belleni@fishforth.co.uk or call the office on 0131 445 1527
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Redd surveys and our new ‘Redd App’
by Jo Girvan
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been surveying and mapping the distribution of salmon redds in spawning tributaries and main stem sites of the Rivers Teith and Devon. There are a number of reasons for doing these surveys. Initially, we can determine where and when spawning has taken place this year. We will be back out to the same sites after the holidays to see if further spawning is taking place on existing redds, or if fresh sites are preferred by late spawners. As we repeat the redd surveys over the coming few winters, we will be looking out for patterns of spawning becoming evident, for example, more redds appearing downstream as the season progresses, or relationships emerging between redd numbers and catch records. We can also keep an eye on the weather and river flows to tease out any relationships between spawning, recruitment and weather conditions.
It is easy to see how redd count data can be used with juvenile electrofishing surveys to identify spawning/recruitment relationships and to characterise juvenile survival rates against background weather and river conditions. A further advantage over juvenile data alone is that we can get an idea of how many adults are involved in spawning. Because of their density dependant mortality lifestyle, it is not possible to tell if one pair or many pairs of adults have been responsible for filling nursery habitat with young. It is important for populations to get as many different genes into the mix as possible to maximise the fitness of the next generation, therefore the larger the number of breeders, the better. We will be looking further into the ‘Number of Breeders’ involved in producing young in more detail through our genetics project which you can read about in the ‘Forth Returning Adults’ section of the Newsletter.
If you are out and about on the river at the back end of the year, keep an eye out for salmon redds and let us know where you are finding them, and when. We received some pretty accurate maps sent in by anglers on the River Devon, and this helped us to target our survey activity to some of the best places. It couldn’t be easier now that we have launched our ‘Redd App’. This is currently a web based tool, so you have to go to our website to use it. It allows you to add points on the map showing where you have seen redds, record some details about them and to upload photographs. Jonathan is working on the downloadable version of the App so that you will soon be able to record the information on your phone while you are out and about. If there happens to be no phone signal where you are, the App will save the information to your phone and will upload it to the website once you are back within range.
To submit a sighting please click here
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The Trust have been out surveying rivers for redds and have managed to capture some amazing footage of salmon in rivers within the District. You can see more videos like this on our Youtube channel by clicking the link below
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The Trust would like to wish all of our followers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. All the best for 2017
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