"A Clear Future for our River"
Welcome to BART's
Summer 2024 Newsletter
Catch up with what's been happening with Team BART! From river restoration, to community engagement, to river surveys and citizen science, we are working hard to improve the health of our rivers and connect people with their amazing blue spaces. Here in our newsletter, you'll be able to read about the many projects we have been working on.
At Bristol Avon Rivers Trust, we've had another dynamic and impactful year. Our team has grown significantly, expanding from 8 to 12 members. As we head into 2024, we're thrilled to welcome our 15th team member this July, marking yet another milestone in our ongoing commitment to protecting our rivers.
As a science-based organisation, we highly value statistics. Our infographic offers a snapshot of the Trust’s achievements in numbers since the pandemic. In just 3 years, the Trust has improved 45 km of river, created 15 wetlands, delivered 20 Natural Flood management schemes, and engaged 5079 children in its activities. While these figures highlight our successful outcomes, the true measure of our impact lies in the intangibles—the camaraderie among our volunteers, the strong connections with farming and angling communities, and the partnerships with grassroots and governmental environmental organisations. Our team spirit shines among our employees, and our positive influence is most evident in the revitalised river habitats we restore and protect, now thriving and teeming with life.
Join us as we continue to make strides in river conservation and look forward to another year of meaningful progress. I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter, which provides a glimpse into some of BART’s project work.
Warm regards, Simon Hunter CEO, Bristol Avon Rivers Trust
BART welcome new members to the team
The Bristol Avon Rivers Trust team is continuing to expand! BART now have a team of 15 people working hard to improve the health of our rivers.
We would like to extend a very warm welcome to our newest members, Robert Bamford, Dan Nicholas and Giorgia Comana, and to congratulate James McCallan and Molly Boyce who are both in new roles as Project Officers. BART also welcomes Thomas Kjeldson as a new trustee.
Robert joins BART as Senior Farm Advisor, working with landowners to improve river health in the Bristol Avon Catcment.
Robert grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland. He started driving a tractor at the age of eight and has travelled extensively, working on different farming systems in New Zealand, India, South Korea, Colombia and Turkey. These experiences led him to study an MSc in Organic Farming and Food Production Systems at Newcastle University, during which time he was also employed on Newcastle University’s research farms.
Since graduating with a distinction he has worked for over five years as a Farm Manager across the UK. During this time he has applied for multiple successful grants, certification schemes and has gained working knowledge of the challenges currently faced by different farming systems in the UK.
He has designed and delivered large scale farm infrastructure projects and has experience of facilitating Farm Cluster groups so that farmers can work together to improve their quality of life, food production and our environment. He is passionate about agriculture and looks forward to working with farmers in the catchment to improve ecosystem services.
Giorgia joins BART as Project Officer, working on a variety of projects to improve river health across the Bristol Avon Catchment.
Giorgia holds an MSc in Sustainable Water Management where she focused her studies on novel water contaminants such as microplastics and PFAS and their sources in the environment. Giorgia is passionate about the application of nature-based solutions to solve contemporary water quality problems and their benefits to wildlife.
Prior to working for BART, Giorgia worked in environmental consulting for the water industry where she has gained a broad understanding of some of the major challenges in the field such as land outfalls/discharges, drought provision, nutrient loading and bathing water quality. Giorgia is also a volunteer monitor for the Riverfly partnership and her local community conservation group.
Giorgia enjoys sharing her passion and knowledge of local wildlife though guided walks in her local community group and volunteering as a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) ambassador in schools.
Dan joins BART as Survey and Monitoring Officer, working with BART’s aquatic ecologist and other members of the team to monitor river wildlife and habitats.
Dan holds a BSc in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Science. Prior to joining BART, Dan worked within the commercial ecology sector, undertaking a range of work including everything from bat and bird population surveys, to the translocation of water voles to newly created habitat.
Before working as an Ecologist, Dan has held a number of community focused roles, and recognises the importance of community engagement in achieving wider conservation objectives. Dan is especially keen on the hands-on aspects of conservation and habitat improvement/creation, so enjoys getting stuck into the practical delivery of BART’s work.
Outside of work, Dan is a keen fly fisher, so there is a strong chance he will be wading in a river somewhere on any given day of the week!
Dr Thomas Kjeldsen joins BART as a Trustee.
Following a MSc and PhD in civil engineering from the Technical University of Denmark, Thomas has pursued a career in water engineer and research in the United Kingdom for the past 25 years. As Reader (Associate Professor) in water engineering at the University of Bath, he teaches and researches across topics on water, environment, and risk analysis.
Thomas is currently working on several research projects focusing on the reconstruction of past flood events in the Bristol Avon catchment, effectiveness of nature-based solutions, climate change impacts, and the use of machine learning in flood management. Together with colleagues he recently published an open-access book on historical floods on the River Avon which can be downloaded here.
Latest News
Bristol's Festival of Nature 2024
BART engages with over 700 people at the Festival of Nature!
BART were part of the annual buzz that is Bristol’s Festival of Nature, held the first weekend of June. Always a popular event, BART’s stall was a highlight for many visitors.
On Saturday, people were delighted by a critically endangered elver caught that morning in the River Trym (and returned that evening), and on Sunday by a surprisingly charismatic leech. Eel and leech shared the stage (tank) with a variety of other river minibeasts demonstrating the wonderful diversity of life found in our rivers.
Visitors to the stall were also able to test the quality of local river water, try out BART’s river-friendly Lego houses, and sign up to a variety of citizen science and volunteering opportunities. Over the two days, an impressive 757 people visited the BART stall. See you there next year!
RiverHub Goes Live!
BART has developed an exciting new web portal displaying the records taken by our wonderful citizen scientists on the state of our rivers in the Bristol Avon catchment.
RiverHub will be of interest to anyone concerned with understanding the health of our rivers. Currently the site features citizen scientist data provided by our BART Beacons, River Detectives, and Riverfly Monitors from across the Bristol Avon catchment.
The information available on the portal allows any interested person, community group, local authority or statutory body to look at this data to help identify the health of their local river system. We intend to use this data to start a process with our stakeholders to plan for the investigations, actions and investments needed to monitor and improve the health of our rivers using this data.
Over the next few months we will be adding further datasets to RiverHub to show more information about the health of our rivers, including data provided by Wessex Water.
You can access the River hub at: https://riverhub.co.uk/
Project Updates
Little Blew
Over the past few months BART have been undertaking a natural flood management project at a site call Little Blew in the headwaters of the Cam Brook. The site hosts an ephemeral stream running down a valley through pasture lands. Through this project we were able to ‘slow the flow’ by holding water back in a series of wetlands and by spilling the stream out across the valley using woody debris to create a more diverse suite of habitats at the site. Working closely alongside the landowner, the project was designed to complement their ongoing livestock grazing of the site while still benefitting local nature and helping reduce downstream flooding.
Initial site pre-restoration
Following initial feasibility visits and studies, contractors were hired to create a series of four wetland depressions in targeted locations at the head of the field. As these are seasonal wetland scrapes, they remain dry until the stream begins flowing during periods of high rainfall. Collectively these wetlands cover ~600m² of land and hold significant amounts of water. Their capability has been evidenced already with the recent very wet weather during which the scrapes quickly filled up, in doing so preventing large amounts of water reaching the main Cam Brook all at once. To prevent headward erosion occurring at the flow pathways between the wetlands, local stone from the excavations were used to create a stone ‘shelf’ over the outflow pathway which will help maintain the storage capacity of these wetlands for much longer. Over time vegetation will colonise the depressions helping blend them nicely with the surrounding landscape and enabling the area to continue to be grazed by livestock during dry conditions.
Series of temporary wetlands filled with water
Further downstream complex woody debris selectively collected from the woodland on the site were strategically positioned along the flow pathway in placed where they will have the greatest impact by spreading the flow out across the field. The mini temporary wetlands created behind these structures slows the flow of water while also capturing sediment carried within the stream which can otherwise be detrimental to river health. These new wetter areas of the grassland greatly diversify the available habitats creating niches for a wider variety of plant species to establish.
Woody debris in field holding back water and capturing sediment
By spreading the flow pathways out, it takes longer for water to reach the main channel while also increasing the likelihood water will infiltrate into the soil to be stored for even longer periods of time. This also helps promote the formation of wet meadow habitat with an associated greater variety of species preferring wetter conditions establishing. Towards the bottom of the valley, two scrapes were dug to direct the surface water back into the main channel. Working alongside the landowner, these scrapes were designed to make sure that the existing livestock feeding area positioned at the bottom of the field remains dry and that any mud building up around this feeding station is not carried away by the flows into the river.
Series of woody debris down the valley creating a rich mosaic of wetlands and channels
You can see in the images the transformation from a simple single-channelled ephemeral stream to a complex and diverse series of interlacing channels and wetlands which will provide a much greater range of ecosystem services. It is fantastic to see these actions working as they were designed to do so quickly after implementation and it will be great to see how they develop and improve the local habitat and flood risk downstream.
Collaborative River Restoration Work
Over the last few months with the help of Mossy Earth, Bart have been hard at work restoring and improving rivers and streams in and around the Chew catchment. BART have restored ~400m of the Candlestick stream inputting complex woody debris into the river. Project funder, Mossy Earth created a really good video that can be found here.
BART have also been creating cross drains across farm tracks to reduce the volume of surface water and sediment entering the Candlestick stream and improving overall water quality.
Working with the Halpin trust and local landowners BART have been hard at work restoring and enhancing the Candlestick stream and Bathford Brook. Two seasonal wetlands have been created to increase floodplain reconnection, storing water during high flows, whilst also creating incredibly valuable habitat in there own right.
BART also worked with local volunteers to improve habitat along a ~200m reach of the Bathford Brook to input complex woody debris and improve habitat for fish and invertebrates found within the stream.
Gauze Brook Restoration
BART worked with local volunteers from the Hullavington Environment Group to restore a section of the Gauze Brook near Hullavington by planting trees and building a series of woody berms.
