BART have been working to improve the River Marden in Calne for a number of years now. To date, this has included in-stream habitat works, local engagement with presentations, education sessions (such as river dipping with the local Scouts Group) and Riverfly monitoring training.
Calne scouts out river dipping in the River Marden in 2016.
Whilst all of these activities have been occurring, we have been working in the background to get together a river Catchment plan for the River Marden by doing a series of walkover surveys and landowner/leaseholder meetings along the length of the river. As a result, we have a number of improvement areas that we will be searching for funding for over the coming years.
We are pleased to announce that a number of these improvement areas will be ticked off as we have secured funding from the Environment Agency’s Fisheries Improvement Fund, which comes from the sales of rod licences and goes directly into capital improvements in our rivers of angling interest – another great reason to make sure you have a rod licence before you go out fishing, the other one being bailiffs!
This project (which will hopefully be Phase 1 of several) will include the following actions:
- The removal of two boulder weirs which are impounding the river, resulting in reduced flow diversity and silt accumulation on substrates.
- Coppicing of a large section of overshaded, canopied river.
- In-stream woody habitat works to increase flow, habitat and depth diversity in a straightened section of the river.
- Initial fish passage investigations for two barriers to migration.
One of the impounding weirs
We will keep you updated as this project continues!
We would also like to thank the individuals who have recently reported local concerns regarding river health to us as well as the community groups who have recently met with us to discuss sourcing funds for future improvement options.
If you have any questions or would like to help out to improve the Magnificent Marden with either volunteer time or sourcing funding, please get in touch with BART Project Manager on harriet@bristolavonriverstrust.org
