TV fame for Deerness river project – BBC Countryfile

A NORTH-East river project will feature on the BBC’s Countryfile this weekend (Sunday, March 30).

A film crew spent a day at Lion Mouth Rural Centre, near Esh Winning, County Durham, learning about the Wear Rivers Trust’s River Deerness Restoration Project.

The three-year project includes new fish easements, monitoring and community involvement.

Project officer Steve Hudson said: “Having a TV crew interviewing us about the project is a great advert for all the hard work the trust and all of our partners have put in over the past three years.”

The piece will be included in the BBC One programme on Sunday, March 30, at 7pm.

via TV fame for Deerness river project (From The Northern Echo).

River Deerness Restoration Project | Wear Rivers Trust

The ongoing River Deerness Restoration Project aims to restore habitat connectivity for fish species by creating and monitoring fish passage solutions at a series of manmade barriers on a tributary of the River Wear.

As a result of the Deerness feasibility studies, a successful application was made to Defra’s Catchment Restoration Fund in order to carry out a three-year River Deerness Restoration Project. In partnership with Durham County Council and Durham University, this project will address the fish passage barriers identified during the feasibility studies and, equally importantly, will assess the impact that the easement solutions have.

This assessment will be achieved by ‘before and after’ surveys and monitoring at each easement site, carried out by a PhD student from Durham University’s Biology Department. Electro-fishing and fish-tagging, habitat surveys and invertebrate samples will all be carried out upstream and downstream of each site both before and after easement work. It is expected that the abundance of migratory fish passing the barriers will increase and the PhD work will be used to confirm whether this is the case. The study of fish populations and movements through a series of long culverts in the Old Durham Beck catchment is also part of the three year programme.

The barrier at Cornsay Colliery, the furthest upstream, has now had a fish easement installed and more details are available on the Cornsay project page. By the end of the project we hope to see the whole course of the River Deerness opened up to all local fish species.

via River Deerness Restoration Project | Wear Rivers Trust.