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River Fly Monitoring Anglers, natural guardians of the river environment, are in an ideal position to monitor the health of watercourses they fish, by using the riverflies they aim to imitate with their artificial flies. Many angling groups have expressed a desire to be able to carry out health checks on their waters. The Riverfly Partnership spearheads an initiative to allow anglers to take action that will help conserve the river environment. This initiative provides a simple monitoring technique which anglers can use to detect any severe perturbations in river water quality and puts them in direct communication with the Area Ecological Appraisal Team of the Environment Agency (EA). This angler-driven monitoring scheme, used alongside routine monitoring by the Environment Agency, will ensure that water quality is checked more widely and action taken at the earliest opportunity should any severe perturbations be detected. Riverfly Partnership tutors deliver one-day workshops to fishing clubs and other organisations committed to establishing a group to monitor their local waters. Background The Riverfly Partnership, in collaboration with local organisations, is working to help protect the water quality of watercourses and conserve their riverfly populations. The Riverfly Partnership includes many organisations committed to furthering the understanding and conservation of riverfly populations. The monitoring initiative has been developed over a number of years building on work pioneered by Dr Cyril Bennett on the River Wey in the 1980s, then through workshops delivered by the John Spedan Lewis Trust for the Advancement of the Natural Science on the River Test, and most recently in workshops involving the national recording officers for Ephemeroptera (mayflies or up-winged flies), Plecoptera (stoneflies) and Trichoptera caddisflies or sedges) and coordinated by the Natural History Museum / English Nature partnership. Following the Riverfly Conference held in November 2004 at The Natural History Museum, this initiative is being taken forward with the Environment Agency and the Salmon and Trout Association. One-day monitoring workshop The one-day monitoring workshops, are hosted by a regional coordinator from a local fishing club and delivered by an accredited tutor, together with a local EA Ecological Appraisal Officer. The workshop provides a comprehensive review of the monitoring technique and includes short presentations, practical demonstrations and active involvement by participants at the riverside. Participants receive a guide to the monitoring methodology and have the chance to try it out for themselves. There is a ratio of one tutor to six participants. Each workshop is therefore limited to 12 participants per day. Supported by a comprehensive written guide to the methodology and post-workshop support from the tutors, clubs and organisations are shown how to establish monitoring groups and register sampling sites with their local EA Ecological Appraisal Team. In June 2006 we held our Fly Monitoring Workshop on the river Yarty. This was run by the Natural History Museum and the Environment Agency with generous sponsorship from South West Water who funded a large part of the workshop cost and Wessex Water who funded the sampling kits. The participants also had to contribute towards the cost themselves. The club now has four sets of sampling equipment, twelve trained samplers and a number of approved sites on the Tone and the Axe that will be sampled on a regular basis. Once results start to be accumulated they will be made available on this site so that everyone can see what is happening with our rivers. The intention is to take a three minute representative sample from a specified location and count the number of examples that are found of each of the following eight groups. The identification does not go down to species level so it can be done on the riverbank, with the aid of a hand lens if necessary - a microscope is not needed. What we are looking for: What we have found so far Members can download the recording sheets here (as an Excel spreadsheet) :
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