Trench Meadows is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) off Higher Coach Road next to Load Pit Beck and not far from Shipley Glen. The site contains 4.7 hectares of lowland meadow – a nationally rare habitat. The grasses in the neutral grassland on the site include red fescue, sweet vernal and crested dog’s-tail; wildflowers include herb black knapweed and bird’s-foot trefoil. Devil’s Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis) also indicates the importance of this species-rich grassland. The land adjacent to the meadow is designated as a wet woodland with common alder being the dominant tree species.
The site is owned by the City of Bradford District Council and managed by The Countryside Service, with support from the Aire Rivers Trust. Aire Rivers Trust volunteers have carried out several tasks on both the meadow and in the wet woodland including Himalayan balsam removal, scrub clearance and hedgerow maintenance.
Volunteers make a difference
To date, Aire Rivers Trust volunteers have contributed 335 volunteer hours. 540m2 of scrub has been cleared, which otherwise would have resulted in the meadow becoming woodland. 900m2 of Himalayan balsam have been pulled across the site. The holly hedgerow on Coach Road Bridleway has been improved to provide habitat and act as a stock-proof barrier. Aire Rivers Trust works in partnership with several organisations. West Yorkshire Combined Authority, WSP and Keighley College have all contributed volunteer time to carry out practical environmental tasks.
A local farmer grazes the site, with cattle selectively grazing scrub, keeping down bramble encroachment and providing soil improvements. Bradford Council Countryside service has also undertaken willow thinning on-site to prevent woodland succession.
The site has permissive access for the public and visitors are encouraged to stick to the path and keep their dogs on the lead to prevent disturbance of wildlife and prevent dog fouling. The Trust will continue to carry out management works on-site. To find out more please visit our volunteer website: Volunteer with Us – Aire Rivers Trust
This is the first in a series of interviews by Lucy Johnson, in which she interviews some of the key players in the development past, present and future, of The Aire Rivers Trust. We thank her for her committment and expertise in putting these pieces together.
Before Christmas I sat down with Geoff, a former Chair of the Aire Rivers Trust and current trustee, to talk about what led him to become involved with the charity and to discuss some of his aspirations for the future including partnerships with other Rivers Trusts and Yorkshire Water. Our conversation took place on a gloomy day in December, in a small room furnished with vending machines just behind the post room at the ART HQ.
Geoff is tall, bluff, direct and straightforward, with a warm manner. He comes across as very grounded in practical matters, so I was surprised at the almost whimsical nature of the quote he chose when I asked him for a favourite piece of wisdom. He plumped for the famous quote from the 1989 film, Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come,” which he interprets and puts into practice as, “create opportunities for people who will take those opportunities.” This has been a focus for Geoff since winding down his second career as a consultant on organisational change post several decades with Yorkshire Water, within his work with ART and a recent new trustee role with the Bradford-based Participate Projects.
Geoff characterises the River Aire as the “life-blood” of the community, and has worked for many years to enhance that. He has also been able to bring the environmental focus into play in his role at Participate Projects, using his expertise to guide young people as part of the Venturists programme.
A theme that emerged through our conversation was the importance of the exposure to nature in childhood. Geoff himself during his childhood in Hull would frequently go fishing with his father. He credits these trips with giving him exposure and knowledge that was definitely not part of his schooling, commenting, “you didn’t talk about the environment. No one was worried about it.” Geoff was also influenced by the author Henry Williamson and his books, “Tarka the Otter,” and “Salar the Salmon,” both titles coming readily to mind. Building on this personal experience, Geoff states, “If we can work with children and get children to value the environment and to value water in particular, they will become advocates for life.” Education and engagement are part of the Trust’s key strategies.
We also spoke about ART’s early days. We’re getting into third-hand information here as Geoff was not on the roster till 2013, but it seems that Kevin Sunderland called a meeting a couple of years prior to that, identifying the need for action to improve the River Aire, and a small charity was formed in 2012 comprising some trustees including current chair, Wendy. With typical understatement, when Geoff heard about ART, he contacted them saying, “I know a bit about the Aire.” He has been putting his knowledge to good use on ART’s behalf since, notching up hundreds of hours.
Geoff was asked to become Chair a couple of years after joining. He remained as Chair for seven or eight years, during which time the annual turnover of the Aire Rivers Trust increased tenfold, mainly thanks to the DNAire project. This project was based around getting salmon up to Skipton, and creating fish passes at four significant weirs.
Throughout the interview Geoff emphasised the importance of working in partnership with other organisations, and commented that in his own career he saw a shift from technical skills to relying more on people skills to move forwards. Sam Riley-Gunn leads the ART citizen science projects, and with his professional background Geoff is able to advocate for the use of data gathered to supplement the knowledge base of organisations such as Yorkshire Water.
Recently, in addition to supporting Wendy, Geoff has been instrumental in bringing about a regional partnership with Yorkshire Water between the Aire Rivers Trust and four other Yorkshire rivers trusts – the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust, East Yorkshire Rivers Trust, Calder and Colne Rivers Trust and the Don Catchment Rivers Trust. As a group, there will be opportunities to learn and develop, and perhaps to have more of a voice at a broader level.
Geoff’s journey from being a young boy with an impressive chemistry set, to working within analytical chemistry at a firm which was itself polluting, and from there to Bradford to work for many decades with Yorkshire Water working with pollution at all levels, is one that has made him invaluable to the Aire Rivers Trust and to the broader community and given him irreplaceable knowledge and experience.
Outfall Safari – Leeds
Extended Riverfly Monitoring
Extended Riverfly with the Don Catchment Rivers Trust River Went Project
The usual hazard I encounter getting to river volunteer event days is sleeping through my alarm clock. This Friday I had a legitimate extra hour in bed courtesy of the Don Catchment Rivers Trust, who had organised an event close to me. However, my pleasant walk to the site, a favourite walk for me, was held up by a large cow making strategic use of a necessary gate as a scratching post. I tried five minutes of gentle cajoling, before deciding to risk being crushed and squeezing past.
The event was an introduction to Riverfly Extended Sampling. The site chosen, championed by Hiram and Jason, was the intriguing location of before and after run-off from the A1. There is an iconic viaduct, built in the 1960s, which brings a gentle roar to the valley, which houses attractive villages and the beautiful unspoiled Brockadale woodland. Also in attendance were Sally and Rebecca from DCRT, Dave and Sue who river monitor locally, and the ‘Knowledge Man,’ who was indispensable over the course of the day, Sheffield-based Paul. Throughout the day Paul frequently identified several species at once, and wryly commented to me when I announced that I thought I had a tray, “with nothing in it,” that “there’s a sleeve in it.” As with all of his pronouncements over the day, this was duly proven to be correct.
My walk to the event, much more direct than the route by car, followed the river Went the whole way. Whilst I have a sentimental attachment to this river, my dad having played in it in the sixties, and some of the locations are beautiful, let’s not pretend it’s teeming with life to the fullest extent. I walked past the large sewage treatment centre a mile and a half upstream of the sampling site, which discharges so frequently that it is rumoured phosphates are going to be removed first in a facility upgrade.
Why is an extended riverfly necessary? It runs alongside the regular ARMI count and is cross-compatible, although the stone search is slightly shorter, replaced by a surface sweep. It is designed to give a more detailed picture of the character of a river. After numbers are inputted into a bespoke spreadsheet, the output is a Water Quality score and a Silt and Flow score. It is a new scheme, developed from two pilot schemes in Dorset and Lincolnshire. Unlike the regular riverfly, there are not currently trigger levels. Typically, this type of survey would be completed two to four times a year.
When I arrived, three tables were set up in the shelter of the viaduct, one laden with coffee and treats, one set up with traditional “party food” trays placed on laminated A2 labelled sheets, and the third with a more compact and orderly labelled trays with compartments of the type you might keep beads or nuts and bolts in, with some leaflets and books. I’m afraid I didn’t refer much to the printed matter, preferring instead to defer to Paul and Sally’s knowledge. There were also sturdy long-lived Soviet-era microscopes inherited from the University of Sheffield, which revealed surprising details and colour in our invertebrates, an ample supply of plastic spoons (for sorting insects, although Dave and Sue came armed with long-handled paint-brushes, a tip new to me), and small-handheld lenses, in addition to a fair amount of river-water confidently dispensed by Sally at one point as she tried to pour some of the sample through a tiny net.
After an explanation of the survey we proceeded to our first sample. The underlays to the trays were beautifully designed. Sally had done an amazing job using colour and type of species to delineate them. We gravitated towards the table with the octagonal trays for the most part. I did make a token effort to use the bead-box system, but for me at least the larger layout was far more intuitive and educational. In practice the more compact version is probably far more viable in the field, but for accessibility, ease and enjoyment I’d plump for the space-consuming way.
Our first sample had everything from bivalves to olives, and plenty of them. We spent about 90 minutes sorting through the weeds, leaves and vegetation, rescuing the occasional fish, then completed the first survey form. The form is straightforward and is cleverly designed to make obtaining the standard ARMI numbers very clear.
I didn’t find it intimidating or overwhelming. For some reason I was able to spot incredibly tiny invertebrates comfortably – I often struggle with doing things involving very fine motor control such as embroidery, but in the context of shuffling little invertebrates around outdoors with other people this was fine. Many of the additional species were immediately obvious, such as leeches and hoglice, and those that weren’t became more familiar over the day, such as blackfly larvae. I remain incompetent at distinguishing blue-winged olives from regular olives, as of the several species of mayfly covered only olives had received the invitation.
After a delicious lunch thoughtfully provided by Hiram from legendary local bakery Hinitts, I helped Sally as timing buddy and spotter for the second location downstream. My favourite spot in Brockadale is the wall of Hart’s Tongue fern, and our second sampling location was right there, approached from the south bank after squeezing through a gate. I’m not sure how Sally got the bucket through, I was too busy wiggling and hoping I wouldn’t get stuck. There were significantly less reeds at the second location, but we made do, Sally performing the surface skimming which is added to this sampling type with confidence. With the light and people’s energy fading, we analysed the second sample, which was less abundant, particularly in gammarus, but very rich on minute bivalves, which were challenging to count.
The day was extremely well-organised and we were lucky with the weather. As for the sampling itself, obtaining the sample is mostly the same, and analysing it is not too taxing. I’m still at the happy to be able to identify a cased caddis stage, never mind whether they have hoods, bush-tails, or weighted cases, but I will know to look more closely the next time I see one.
If you have tried the standard riverfly and not enjoyed it, Extended probably won’t change your mind, but I would recommend trying out Extended to anyone who does river sampling, to bring a little more context to regular sampling. The final scores were Site 1, an ARMI score of 7, Water Quality 28, and Silt and Flow 32, Site 2, ARMI score of 5, Water Quality 21, and Silt and Flow 26.
I’m disappointed that the River Went, through unspoiled woodland, couldn’t muster better ARMI scores than I get with monitoring with the Calder and Colne Rivers Trust, on my blue-tinged stretch of Spen Beck. I guess that’s what you get when you channel run-off from a dual carriageway into a watercourse, which is itself already essentially an outfall for a large village by the time it reaches Wentbridge. Sally and Paul were optimistic that the phosphates measure will improve matters.
Please contact Sam Riley-Gunn at contact@aireriverstrust.org.uk if you are interested in monitoring with the Aire Rivers Trust next season, or if you would like to hear more about other river-related events.
Sally of DCRT can be contacted at info@dcrt.org.uk or www.dcrt.org.uk if you are in the catchment area for the River Don and would like to know more about standard or extended riverfly or practical days.
Airedale Group supporting the Environment
We are delighted to announce that Airedale Group, a Crosshills based award-winning manufacturer and distributor of speciality and commodity chemicals, has pledged 200 hours of volunteer time to support the Aire Rivers Trust with our work to improve the Aire Valley rivers, reducing flooding and encouraging nature in the area..
The move formalises a commitment by the firm to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2045 and strengthens their commitment to working with businesses in a joint commitment to a wide range of river-centred environmental improvements.
The first group of volunteers worked to improve the Site of Special Scientific Interest at Bingley South Bog. They trimmed the hedgerow that can be seen from Bingley Relief Road so that the site’s meadow can now be seen from the road. The hedgerow is a mixture of hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, hazel and dog rose and provides habitat for birds and invertebrates. The resultant brash arisings were used to make habitat piles to further improve the site. Bingley South Bog is an SSSI with it being home to the regionally rare marsh cinquefoil (Potentilla palustris).
Richard Ward, managing director of Airedale Group, explains: “Over recent years we have implemented many projects to increase sustainability and lessen our impact on the environment, from the installation of solar panels on our warehouses, to creating wildflower areas in our local park.
“But with the launch of our ‘net zero by 2045’ journey, we wanted to mark the occasion with something special that really demonstrates our commitment to making a difference.
“Aire Rivers Trust seemed the perfect partner. The work of the trust directly impacts the immediate environment of our Airedale Group headquarters, we work closely with Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency and have many customers in the water treatment industry.”
If you would like more information about volunteering, either as an individual or on behalf of your company, please contact the office via email at contact@aireriverstrust.org.uk
We were delighted that this announcement generated some significant media coverage, read the links below for more detail.
