Rivermouth Trust — Our Work
Visual concept preview of the Nonprofit Cause template's Our Work page: Explains the six conservation programmes, the landowner agreements they depend on, and the three reaches in the work now. The sections below are a non-interactive composition of open-registry blocks.
We do not spread thin. A reach gets a full year of survey, a plan marked up by the people who own its banks, three years of work and ten of monitoring — and we say out loud what we will not be able to fix.
Every metre of the Corrow has an owner. Nothing happens on a reach until the farm, the angling club or the commoners who hold that bank have read the plan and marked it up. It is slower, and it is why the fences at Blackbank are still standing after nine winters.
We survey for a full year before we touch anything, so we know what August looks like as well as February. Any landowner can end their agreement with us, and we write the work so that the trees and the fences would stay if they did.
Each one has a named lead, a line in the accounts and a published monitoring record. Nothing here is a pilot.
Bankside planting
Alder, willow and hazel along the south banks, grown on from local seed and guarded until the deer lose interest.
Barrier work
Barriers argued one at a time on their own evidence. Four eased so far; two left in place, and we explain why.
Spawning gravels
Clean gravel returned to the runs the ford widening buried in the seventies, then counted for trout redds each winter.
Invasive species
Balsam and knotweed walked reach by reach every June, and a hard line held against signal crayfish above Hollow Weir.
Farm advice
Fencing, gates and alternative cattle water, so a buffer strip costs a working farm grazing rather than goodwill.
Monitoring
Thirty-one points read monthly by trained volunteers to a written protocol, with the raw readings published.
Where this year’s money and Saturdays are going.
Nine hundred metres of collapsing bank, held with willow spiling and planted through with alder. The beck below ran the colour of tea after every storm; last winter it ran clear twice.
The shallows here silted over when the ford was widened in the seventies. We have moved clean gravel back in three stages and counted trout redds on it for two seasons running.
The last barrier before the tide. Survey done, agreement signed with the mill, and the notch waiting on the winter window. This is the reach we are raising for.
Thirty-odd people, a trailer of stakes, two flasks and a job list written on the back of a survey sheet. We stop at one o’clock. Nobody has ever been turned away for not knowing anything about rivers.
The questions that come up on the bank most months, answered the way we answer them there.
The work makes far more sense standing in it. First Saturday of the month, Ferney Ford car park, half past eight — boots and a flask, nothing else needed.