Archive for the tag 'Volunteers'

INNS Mapper: A new app for tackling invasive species in England, Wales and Scotland

As most experienced river restorationists know all too well, effectively tackling invasive non-native species (INNS) means knowing exactly where they are in the first place… … and that’s why we’re so stoked to see the new INNS Mapper app now available to download from Google Play and the Apple Store. For several years since the […]

Film night: Reviving the River Irk with Mike Duddy

Our urban warrior brother-in-arms Mike Duddy has just announced his well-earned retirement from Mersey Rivers Trust, after 13 years which saw him progress from volunteering with its predecessor Mersey Basin Rivers Trust (and heading up Salford Friendly Anglers) to full-time employment with the Trust in several senior roles. To celebrate Mike’s time with MRT, we’re […]

Bristol calling: The Fishtolian podcasts

From early September 2022 onwards, Pete Tyjas’s famous Fly Culture podcast has been hosting a series of takeovers by The Fishtolian: a mission by Pete Coleman-Smith and Jon Ogborne to find wild brown trout in Bristol, inspired by the Trout in the Trym project. From the series intro: Bristol would never be the first place […]

Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 4 July

Citizen science is making a comeback… … and it’s boosting a British river revival (with this 20-year milestone for the Wandle too!) Weir today, gone tomorrow: demolition work starts on the River Kent’s Bowston paper mill weir Tackling plastic pollution with beach cleans in Cornwall, with lots of resonance for urban river restorationists including mental […]

Fins and Finns: Rewilding Oulujoki and other Nordic rivers

One of the wider Urbantrout team has recently been spending time in the Finnish city of Oulu, and simultaneously we’ve noticed a certain uptick in news from Finland’s urban and otherwise post-industrial rivers (of course, correlation still doesn’t amount to causation, no matter how influential we like to think our various team members really are…) […]

10 years of Urbantrout and Trout in Dirty Places

This month, it’s 10 years since Trout in Dirty Places launched on a (mostly) unsuspecting world. Merlin Unwin Books and Granger’s fly shop threw us one hell of a party, and for a few days, the weird idea of fishing in urban rivers was making headlines across the media, including the Independent, Radio New Zealand, […]

Pic of the day: Riverfly monitoring with a TWIST

Thanks to lots of enthusiasm from local volunteers, Somerset’s urban rivers now have a new cohort of qualified riverfly monitors to look after them. Click through to this report on the Wild Trout Trust website to find out more, and how to get involved in the exciting new TWIST (Transforming Waterways In Somerset Towns) project…

Talking urban rivers on Farlows LIVE

Volunteer activities on urban rivers have certainly seen some setbacks during the Covid-19 pandemic, but forward-thinking organisations of all kinds have taken the opportunity to stay in touch with their supporters online… … and that’s just what Farlows have done with their series of Farlows LIVE interviews on Facebook. On Friday 17 July, this site’s […]

Sharing the international urban river love: Urbantrout goes to Baltimore

Here in the UK, when we think of American rivers, it’s likely to be the mighty Madison and other Montana rivers that come to mind – or maybe the spring creeks of Pennsylvania that almost mirror the geology and water chemistry of our own chalkstreams. What’s less well appreciated is that the US (and especially […]

Pic of the day: The Mersey Mermaid

Now we know salmon are running the Mersey again, why should the Little Mermaid be far behind? The Mersey Rivers Trust‘s intrepid crew of volunteers hit the river in Stockport on a grey November Sunday… … and here’s what else they found besides a smutty-faced little Ariel… (Photo: Mersey Rivers Trust)

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