17 & 18 September

Saturday dawned bright and sunny and a group of volunteers descended once again on the river at Carshalton to carry on the habitat work started on 3 & 4 September.

As well as more flow defectors a number of cover logs were introduced to provide cover and shelter for fish.  Without shelter and cover, fish are vulnerable to predators and will not take up residence in a stretch.

A cover log with spacers ready for introduction.

The metal bars are driven into the bed to hold it securely in place.  Fish are then able to hide beneath the space beneath.

Securing the cover logs in position gives the volunteers a good physical workout!

Our hard working volunteers satisfied after a good days work!

Sunday was another lovely ‘Indian Summer’ morning and saw a camera crew tracking our work: the Wild Trout Trust in conjunction with Fish On Productions were getting some footage of urban river restoration techniques for a future production.

A ‘dragons tooth’ berm was created by installing logs and brash bundles in a V from the bank edge.  This was infilled with brash bundles and will in time trap silt and become vegetated.  The low level berm not only narrows the river to produce faster local flows and clean gravels but increases marginal vegetation and habitat for invertebrates and other species.

Logs being secured with metal stakes:

Volunteers bringing brash bundles downstream to be used as infill:

The berm is low lying and will be easily overtopped by higher flows which will allow it to trap silt in the brash matrix.

Once the dragons tooth was finished the bundles were securely wired down to make sure they stay in place: 

With a huge thankyou to all our volunteers: Ann, Chris, Gideon, James, Jez, Jo, John, Marilyn, Peter, Richard and Solomon.

This event was supported by the WATER project selected within the scope of the INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England cross-border European cooperation programme, co-financed by the ERDF.