Riverfly training
A few of us have spent the summer learning how to monitor riverfly with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Today was the day for the formal training to give us the certification and the login to the national database for recording results.
The training was provided by Hannah from the wetlands trust who has recently taken over as the area co-ordinator for riverfly monitoring in the local catchments.
It’s a citizen science project where everything is standardised as much as possible for consistency – the training, equipment, site selection and recording methodology.
There are 8 species we are looking for, each of which is highly susceptible to river pollution. The monitoring provides an early warning system for potential problems upstream with water quality. Essentially the species are counted and scored monthly in the same spots of a river. If the number falls below a “trigger value” then a protocol is invoked which alerts the Environment Agency.
We were fortunate to have Pete from the EA with us on the course and he was able to provide background into how this monitoring fits in with the wider role to manage river health. This is clearly something in the news at the moment, and targets have been repeatedly missed nationally for a status of “good” for all catchments.
We had a practical session in the river Frome behind Ebley Mill. The score count for that section was somewhat lower than we saw in other parts of the Frome over the summer, but it was still healthy.
After the course a few of us exchanged numbers and formed WhatsApp groups. Once the logins have been set up and equipment provided, then we’ll schedule in our monthly site visits to begin monitoring properly.
