Avon River Champions
Avon River Champions is an informal network of community groups within the River Avon catchment from Dartmoor to Burgh Island. It includes all the parishes in the catchment – South Brent, Loddiswell, Aveton Gifford, Bigbury and Bantham & Thurlestone. It held its first meeting at Heron Valley Café in May attended by 17 representatives of groups such as Save the Avon Valley (200 members) and Aune Conservation Association (300 members). Both groups have several well-known riparian landowners and farmers within their membership. The rising concern about the state of our rivers was top of the political agenda in the South Hams during the recent District Council elections and it is anticipated that this will be a hot potato for the next general Election as well.
Avon River Champions is part of the larger network – South Devon River Championswww.south-devon-river-champions.org which will be showcased at the Devon County Show (18,19, 20 May) in the Ocean Discovery Zone thanks to Juliette Jackson of Seadream Education. Fund raising to support landowners wanting to engage in wildlife restoration and run-off remediation works and supporting their projects with volunteer teams will be a priority of the Avon River Champions.
By getting to know more about what is happening in neighbouring parishes, the Avon River Champions aim to develop collaborative catchment-wide projects which follow the example of the Yealm Estuary to Moor project in the Yealm catchment. Peter Brown, coordinator for the YEM community group, explains that "Yealm Estuary to Moor is a cooperative of community environmental organisations within the catchment with the common objective of restoring existing habitats and creating new ones to form wildlife corridors from the joined up fragments. They do this in partnership with professional NGOs (Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, Westcountry Rivers Trust and Devon Wildlife Trust) and the support of the riparian parishes, the latter being primarily concerned about sewage discharge into the river. All the parish councils in the Yealm catchment have coordinated their efforts through the River Yealm Water Quality Group with representatives from all parishes and chaired by Brixton parish council. The community group and riparian PCs work together in support of common aims”. Peter says “It is vital that landowners and farmers are approached by known and trusted professional intermediaries who can advise on making space for nature on their land without loss of income. We have recruited landowners in the Yealm catchment following farming workshops organised by FWAG. We provide funding to enable this to happen and will continue to fund habitat restoration works and provide volunteers in support”.
The first step is to recruit more citizen scientists in the Avon catchment to support the work of Westcountry Rivers Trust and inform our parish councils of the pollution incidents in our tributaries that are leading to the poor health of the River Avon. We have 30 places in June on a training for citizen scientists from Jack Middleton, Westcountry River Trusts community engagement officer. (see Bigbury Drums for the date). The sampling kits cost £30 (enough for twelve monthly samples at one sampling point) and the training session costs £350 for a group of thirty. Parish Councils will be approached to fund this vital work. Contact info@bigburynetzero.org 07908 525663 if you would like to know more or to book a place. The Avon is 23 miles long and sampling points need to be about 1.75 miles apart. The Tributaries also need to be monitored.
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