The abstract submission deadline for the Fish Passage Conference 2015 is closing in just over 3 weeks! If you would like to present your findings relating to fish passage and connectivity, submissions are being taken up untill February 2nd. The conference will be held between the 22nd & 24th of June, in the city of Groningen, The Netherlands.
SEPA's River Basin Management Plan Consultations are now open. There are two plans that are open for consultation, these are the Scotland River basin district and the Solway Tweed River basin district. Your input to these consultations and contribution to the delivery of the second river basin plans is essential if they are to meet the challenges facing the Scottish water environment in the future.
England is home to the majority of the world's chalk streams. They provide unique habitats for iconic species such as water voles, otters and mayflies, however a WWF Report has revealed the shocking state that our chalk streams are in. It was found that 77% of England's chalk streams do not meet good status under the Water Framework Directive and that only 12 out of 224 chalk streams have protected status.
This year’s IRF European Riverprize was awarded to the Austrian stretch of the Mur. The €25,000 prize was given at the Riverprize Gala Dinner at Vienna City Hall on Tuesday 28th October. The project has successfully restored natural processes and habitats along 22km of the river. Following its European success the Mur will now be entered into the Thiess International Riverprize 2015.
The Westcountry Rivers Trust, in collaboration with DEFRA and the Rivers Trust, has developed a method for undertaking stakeholder-led spatial visualisation of ecosystem services provisioning areas across a catchment landscape. During this participatory process, primary, secondary and tertiary stakeholders and technical specialists work with a broker/facilitator to collate and scrutinise all of the data and evidence relating to environmental infrastructure and ecosystem services provision for their area of interest.
The consultation for the draft update for the River Basin management plan is now open. It will stay open until 10/04/15 at 23:45. Your responses will help influence and shape the update to the river basin management plans in 2015. A consultation response document will be available in Summer 2015.
The International River Symposium in Canberra, Australia will be held between the 15th and 18th September 2014. The event has an over-arching theme of Large River Basins.
The abstract submission deadline is today (16th May) but early bird bookings can be made up until the 30th June.
The new Catchment-Based Approach (CaBA) website is now live. The website is designed to showcase the work of catchment partnerships aross England and Wales and to encourage the sharing and adoption of best practice in stakeholder-led catchment managment planning, delivery and evaluation.
The England River Prize was presented to the winning team by International RiverFoundation (IRF) Ambassador Alastair Driver and the River Restoration Centre (RRC) Chairman Fiona Bowles.
The prize was awarded by a partnership of the RRC, WWF-UK, Environment Agency and the International River Foundation to celebrate successful approaches in river restoration delivering a wide range of benefits.
A wide range of groups and organisations responded to this consultation, including water and energy companies, charities, non-governmental organisations, wildlife groups, industrial organisations and individuals. Through the consultation you told us that:
• you support the catchment based approach to river basin planning and delivery
• local delivery should be informed by an overarching strategy
• common issues could be tackled through working together across catchments