News

The Wild Trout Trust is one of 37 environmental groups which has written to the UK’s Secretary of State to criticise the “serious deficiencies” in water companies’ plans for maintaining the country’s water supplies when the next drought strikes, and ask for radical improvements to the information presented in these draft water resource management plans.

As the letter notes, by 2030 the shortfall of water may be as much as a billion litres per day: in other words, 10% of the UK’s population’s daily water requirements.

In this early summer’s recent dry spell, we are already seeing rivers across England struggling with lack of water, even in areas where the vast majority of water comes from river or groundwater sources.

The latest salmon counter update for the Test and Itchen has just been released by the EA.

Counter data from 2022 for the two rivers suggest that salmon returning stock estimates are the 4th lowest and lowest respectively for the period 1990 - 2022.

For the Itchen, the returning salmon stock in 2022 was estimated to be at only 20% of the conservation limit - that is 20% of the number of returning adults needed to maintain the population.

The campaigning environmental charity River Action UK has launched a new Charter for Rivers.

Ahead of Invasive Species Week 2023, the Environment Agency and Angling Trust (AT) have once again announced £75,000 of funding, through the Angling Improvement Fund, for angling clubs to tackle invasive non-native plant and invertebrate species (INNS) which threaten the health of their fisheries.

Amazing news: we’ve just heard from the World Fish Migration Foundation that our Snake Lane fish passage project has made it to the top 5 contenders for the Dam Removal Europe Award 2022, which has just opened for a public vote.

The money raised in our Spring Auction is crucial to what we do – it’s our single most important fundraising event of the year. We run the auction with one (very busy) member of staff and one (also very busy) volunteer. All our auction lots are given to us for free, and because we run our own auction website, 100% of the money, apart from any credit card fees, goes to support our work.

A report from Natural England has been published with an assessment of the wild beaver population of the River Avon (Somerset / Bristol) and its tributaries.

The report estimates that around 50 beavers (excluding kits) are living wild in the catchment and their territories currently occupy between 4-11% of the available bankside in the watercourses.They say: 'Few management issues were noted, probably because the population is in the early establishment phase'.

For lots more information about beavers and their impact, go to the Beaver Resource Hub on this website. 

The Chalk Streams First coalition (CSF) of eNGOs*, led by the gargantuan efforts of WTT founder and V-P, Charles Rangeley-Wilson OBE, has responded to various water company management plans with a proposal to give our magical chalk streams first use of the water in their aquifers, rather than the current model of abusive abstraction in the headwaters. 

The idea comes from the exhaustive work of expert hydrologist, John Lawson, commissioned by the Wild Trout Trust, Rivers Trust and Angling Trust, to investigate shifting points of abstraction towards the lower end of catchments. John’s work demonstrates that abstraction in the headwaters is robbing rivers across entire regions of critical flow, without which the streams simply cannot function naturally. 

Vitally, we do not propose the Chalk Streams First model as the only solution to England’s increasing water supply crisis, but as part of a multi-dimensional response to the crisis, including more reservoirs; however, it is a solution that could be implemented (we argue) by 2030, well ahead of the other options.

There will be a conference on dam removal at the Old Trafford cricket ground in Manchester, 18 & 19 May 2023. WTT’s Tim Jacklin will be speaking about his Snake Lane project on the River Ecclesbourne and also about Jonny Grey’s project to remove Scotton Weir on the River Nidd. The conference is organised by Dam Removal Europe and bookings can be made on their website.