Website updates
Over the last few weeks we have made some updates to the website. There is a new page on our expanding Riverfly Monitoring work and another on River Water Quality which looks at what we know about the quality of the water in our two chalk streams from various sources. We have also added to the Links page, consolidating access to more information about our catchment, its rivers and wildlife.
Environment Audit Committee Report
“Getting a complete overview of the health of our rivers and the pollution affecting them is hampered by outdated, underfunded and inadequate monitoring regimes. It is clear, however, that rivers in England are in a mess:
So opens the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s Report on Water Quality in Rivers, which was published in January. You can read the full report here, including it’s comprehensive list of 82 recommendations.
Barkway Parish Council
We were extremely grateful to Barkway Parish Council for their recent donation of financial support. The upper part of our catchment has suffered significant raw sewage spills in the last few years at both Barkway and Therfield, whilst the streams themselves are shadows of their former selves when they run at all. It is great to have Barkway Parish Council’s support for our work.
Announcements from Thames Water
We received a communication recently from Thames Water’s Catchment Lead outlining plans for sewage treatment work infrastructure, which included locations within our catchment. You can read more in our blog post here
One last thing
In the depths of February with a cold northerly wind on your back, perhaps the cuckoo, that great harbinger of the warm days of spring is far from your mind. However as a distraction from the howling storms outside and to remind us of those warmer days to come and that spring is on the way I thought I would share this fascinating and engaging Royal Society Lecture. Cuckoos and their Victims is presented by eminent biologist Nick Davies who gives deep insights into the evolutionary arms race between cuckoos and their victim hosts, based on his long-running research programme at Wicken Fen.
