South West Water donates £2,000 to help clean up River Axe tributary

It's surprising what you can find in a river these days. Members of the Kit Brook Restoration Project, based in Chardstock, donned their wellies and paddled in the water to receive a £2,000 cheque from the South West Water Neighbourhood Fund.

The funding will pay for training in two river monitoring techniques – Riverfly and MoRPH. 

Local resident Paul Spearing explained: "Riverfly surveys identify the number and type of invertebrates living in a river. A healthy and diverse population of freshwater invertebrates is one indicator of the state of a river. 

"MoRPH surveys on the other hand will help us better understand how our river works. MoRPH enables river enthusiasts and citizen scientists to get involved with recording and assessing physical habitat and hydro-morphological functioning in their local rivers and streams."

The Kit Brook is a tributary of the River Axe and the restoration project is working with local communities in Chardstock and Wambrook to get people more connected with their river.

River and water quality surveys are just part of the work being done to get the Kit Brook back into good health. The team also organises river walks and ecological surveys, as well as working with local landowners and farmers.

The recent River Café held in Chardstock was a great success with visitors expressing great interest in finding out more about rivers.

The team is always looking for more volunteers, as team member Vicky Whitworth told Nub News: "People care for those they love so I'm pretty sure that if people fall in love with their river they will want to take care of it. 

"We can wait for the government to take action or we can do something ourselves. After all this is our home, our place and we can make it the very best it can be for us humans, for nature, for wildlife if we work together.

"We have lots of different ways people can get involved and we'd love to hear from people. We are, as an example, looking for someone to take a lead on addressing the Himalayan Balsam problem.'

Daniel Lazar, who joined the Kit Brook team several months ago despite living outside the immediate area, commented: "The South West Water team popped over to the Kit Brook to meet us and hand over the cheque. 

"We were very pleased to find a good dollop of otter poo on the river bank, and were able to show our new friends from South West Water who lives in the river.

"South West Water is always having its ear bent about human poo in our rivers but today we were able to show them a different perspective."

If you want to get in touch with the Kit Brook Restoration team, email [email protected]