Pine Martens Make Guest Appearance at WATER’s Annual Public Meeting

The Charity held it’s annual update meeting at The Watermark Centre in Ivybridge on Wednesday 15th July. Despite the clash with England’s World Cup semi-final, attendance was remarkably good.

Each year, WATER takes the opportunity to update our supporters on what we have been doing in the last 12 months. Opening a series of briefings by the different workstream leads, Chair, Charlotte Grezo explained it had been an extremely busy 12 months on all fronts.

Here are just some of the highlights:

Our Expanded Farmers Network is Very Active

WATER’s Farmers Network now represents half the farmed land in the catchment (excluding common land). Multiple environmental improvement projects have been identified on 20 farms and funding is now being sought to implement them. Among the projects are many that directly benefit the Erme such as: pond creation, watercourse fencing, leaky dams and coordinated culls of riverside Himalayan Balsam.

Otter Spotters Recruited for our Monitoring Programme

Our call for Otter Spotters to attend a volunteer monitoring training session was over-subscribed. See separate report in this newsletter.

Meadow Making Combines Biodiversity and Connectedness

Our initiative to encourage private landowners, in the catchment, to create wild flower meadows on their land has met with an enthusiastic reception. One landowner had tried, unsuccessfully, for three years to create a meadow and was on the verge of giving up. But he found the feedback from a one-to-one drop-in session with Devon Wildlife’s Lynne Kendardine sufficiently encouraging to have another go.

His site has since been visited by a specialist plug plant nurseryman who found that earlier attempts were perhaps a little more successful than previously thought. There is now a plan to make progressive step-by-step progress with additional planting.

In addition to the biodiversity benefits these meadows bring they collectively start to build a connected corridor for nature across the catchment.

Water Testing Remains a Cornerstone of WATER’s Fight Against Pollution

We have now completed regular testing at Coastguards Beach with 40 samples taken over the last year. We will now focus on testing tributaries. In February we collected 14 samples from the Ayleston Brook catchment and in May a further 14 sites were sampled across the wider catchment. These samples are measured for bacteria, nitrates, ph, ammonia, turbidity, temperature and dissolved oxygen.

We are developing a structured testing report that will examine all of our results and link these to: SWW Event Duration Monitor data, Environment Agency Rainfall data and neighbouring land use.

And to cap it all. . .there’s The CAP

Our Catchment Action Plan (CAP) is the backbone of our river restoration strategy. It recognises the Erme, like all rivers, is one living, interconnected system, not a set of isolated problems.
We have completed our mapping of the catchment and identified 39 key reaches which have undergone a reach assessment and where we are now seeking dates, some from external sources, to fill in any gaps in our knowledge. We will soon have a very comprehensive understanding of our river that can inform our action planning.

During our assessments we began to recognise that pressures on the river were falling into seven recurring themes: Poor water quality / Fish and Invertebrate passage blocked, Floodplain and wetland habitat loss, in-channel habitat diversity loss / Riparian habitat and bank degradation / Fine sediment and soil erosion / Non native invasive species.

All of this painstaking work has been undertaken because of the simple fact that “you cannot understand a river by looking at the water alone.”

Fundraising that Makes the News

John Mildmay-White’s 600km solo Ultramarathon raised the profile of the Charity, the river Erme and the plight of rivers across the UK. Run for the Rivers was picked up by BBC south West and shown on Spotlight. A follow-up piece appeared on the BBC website marking John’s arrival at Westminster bridge, under the shadow of Big Ben as he completed his epic run.

The event captured the public’s imagination too resulting in a very substantial number of donations to WATER which will help fund vital projects in the coming 12 months.

A film of the run and John’s interactions with people along the riverbanks will be released later in the year.

Pine Martens are Now Running Free in the South West for the First Time in 150 Years.

Those who attended our July 15th Annual Public Meeting were treated to a fascinating insight into the world of Pine Martens by our guest speaker, Field Officer Daniel Brown. Daniel has been a key member of Devon Wildlife’s Trust very successful introduction of Pine Martens to Exmoor and Dartmoor. They are now becoming established in their new territories for the first time in 150 years. Being woodland dwellers, Pine Martens find the wooded valleys of moorland rivers, like the Erme, very attractive habitats, often using fallen trees as bridges to cross streams as they roam across their quite extensive territories.

Daniel’s talk was a really deep dive, covering all the basics of this fascinating species and illustrated by some wonderful camera-trap footage of Pine Martens exploring and enjoying their new territories.