So I’m in the final couple of days of my Natural Talent Apprenticeship. It’s been a really good year and I’m somewhat sad it’s coming to an end, but, I have good news! Come later this month I’ll be starting work with the South East Wales Rivers Trust as their River Clun Restoration & Funding Officer on their “Clean the Clun” project (Clun is pronounced Clean) which I’m very excited about. The catchment is a tributary of the Ely and travels 14miles from The Garth, down to Llantrisand before meeting the Ely in Pontyclun. It’s quite an urban catchment with sprawling villages merging into each other and also suffers from problems from mine water, invasive species, missed connections and dumping, to name a few. I’ll be working on mapping all the problems on the catchment, raising awareness and establishing a volunteer group within the local community, and also submitting funding applications to tackle the problems throughout the catchment.
It’s been a great year working with NIEA’s River Ecology team and the Ballinderry Rivers Trust. NIEA have taught me so much about Freshwater Invertebrate sampling and identification, the role of the government in statutory monitoring and meeting EU Water Framework Directive targets, and how this links in with whats happening on ground, whilst the Ballinderry have given me the fantastic opportunity to work within the heart of a rivers trust further developing my skills through managing and training volunteers, organising white clawed crayfish surveys, electro-fishing, assisting with freshwater pearl mussel surveys, and submitting (with some success!) funding applications.
The people I’ve worked with over the last 12 months have been absolutely amazing and I’m definitely going to miss them. So thank you very much to everybody with the NIEA, Ballinderry Rivers Trust, my lovely Ballinderry ARMI volunteers and of course TCV. I hope to be back at some point in the future to see how everybody is getting on, but for now it’s time for the next stage of the adventure.
Best wishes to all,
Emma
The Ballinderry River’s Trust team with John Craven and director Gayle Simpson
NIEA River Ecology Team shining brightly at the Autumn audit.