The West Country floods may be causing heartache for many but they are good news for the River Kennet and its wildlife so long as they don’t last too long or get any worse.
That is the positive message from Charlotte Hitchmough, director of Action River Kennet (ARK), who gave an upbeat report to the organisation’s annual meeting in Ramsbury last week.
She told Marlborough News Online: “It has been great to see so much water in the river after the 18 months of drought. Stretches of the Winterbourne, which have been dry for over two years now have water in them.”
“All the fallen leaves and algae that accumulated on the river bed is being cleaned out by the fast flows.”
And she added: “The climate forecasters suggest that these extreme weather patterns may become the norm, with very dry and then very wet spells. Extreme weather events are not ideal for chalk streams.”
“Flood water brings dirty road and field run off into the river, as well as the contents of overflowing sewers. The very fast scouring flow is beneficial to clean the gravels river bed ready for fish spawning.”
“But if the floods stay for too long the fish eggs — and even the fish themselves — get washed down stream. Strong winter flows are also essential to kick-start the growth of stream water crowfoot, which is an essential component of the chalk stream ecology.”
“But too much flow for too long and it all gets washed away. So, we hope that the current weather will settle down, for the sake of the people and the wildlife.”
Speaking at the annual meeting, naturalist Peter Marren challenged the Environment Agency to explain how the upper Kennet, which has no fish in it, could be classified as a river in ‘Good Ecological Status’.
River keeper John Hounslow gave an account of the last year on the river, which has experienced above average rainfall in every month except one since April.
While this has helped the river to recover, there has been a steep decline in fish stocks, particularly grayling, and a lack of healthy weed growth.
He remains concerned that each time there is a drought the river recovers less well, and is in a steady state of decline.
A new electrofishing survey and ARK’s regular redd (trout nest) surveys of the river show that the wild trout population in the reach has increased since the last survey three years ago.
“This is especially encouraging at a time when the rest of the river generally declined in health during the drought, and shows the effectiveness of the work we have done,” said Charlotte.
“It’s been a good year for us with both the Care for the Kennet Campaign and the Stonebridge Lane wild river reserve projects winning national awards.”
“Our membership has increased, we have more active volunteers and we have run more projects, notably the recently completed ambitious fish pass in Marlborough.”
“ARK are now ‘catchment hosts’ for the whole Kennet, and after a successful first year, the World Wildlife Fund has offered to fund us to perform this role again in 2012/13.”
Centuries old tradition marked at fruit tree planting
