Wildlife returns to restored River Avon

Eight months after the Trust and partners completed restoration work on a stretch of the Salisbury Avon near Pewsey, wildlife is flooding back into the area and the water is teeming with young fish.

Wild trout are leaping for mayflies, yellow flag iris and dainty water forget-me-nots sprinkle the river banks and water flows healthily through the emerald leaves and white flowers of water crowfoot.

The work, which was carried out last October at East Chisenbury, transformed a 600 metre section of the river to encourage its chalk stream habitat, which is globally rare and in decline.

During the five-week project funded by the Environment Agency and coordinated by the Trust’s Wessex Chalk Streams Project (WCSP), Cain Bio-engineering (based at Lower Woodford, near Salisbury) reshaped the channel to make the water flow faster, and dug adjacent ponds to provide new homes for animals including toads, newts and grass snakes and invertebrates such as dragonflies.

“The construction work of the winter left the new banks stripped of vegetation, but now the river is looking lovely. We held a team-building day earlier in the year to plant out hundreds of wild plants such as purple loosestrife and water mint and these are growing in abundance,” says WCSP Project Officer Ruth Clarricoates, who managed the work.

The river’s problems stem from the 1960s when it was dredged, making it too wide and slow flowing for wildlife to flourish (left). The project reversed this by creating gravel ‘berms’ (bank extensions) to act as pinch points, causing the water to flow faster and flush away unwanted fine sands out of the gravel. This makes it ideal for water crowfoot to grow and for fish to spawn in.

“The fact that we have water crowfoot thriving here is hugely important because this indicates that we have got the conditions just right,” says Ruth.

The project also pinned tree branches from alder and willow into the water alongside the berms to provide a refuge for fish fry and invertebrates which will protect them from predators such as herons, egrets and bigger fish.

The fish are certainly appreciating their improved habitat. “Surveys conducted before the work showed there was a poor variety of species at the site, but grayling moved in the day after the improvements were made, and now you can see lots of adult wild trout. When I went down the other day the water was black with young fish – it looked like a soup,” says Ruth.

“Through our work to improve habitat kingfishers can now nest, water voles can burrow, brown trout can spawn and a greater variety of plants can spread their roots.

“ Earlier this month WCSP held an open day on the river as a Thank You to all those involved, including the Environment Agency, Cain Bio-engineering, the landowners who patiently allowed project workers onto their land and the local fishing club.

The Wessex Chalk Streams Project is a partnership between the Trust, Natural England, the Environment Agency, Wessex Water and Wiltshire Fishery Association.