Conservation activities

A number of projects are planned to restore habitats within the catchment and help to reverse the decline of our sensitive freshwater species.

Fascines

Restore, renaturalise, and protect some 30 kms of river banks by:

  • Installing 30 kms of stock-fencing, protecting 2 m wide buffer strips, enabling the regrowth of bankside vegetation
  • Coppicing and tree planting
  • Inserting fascines (rough bundles of brushwood which protect stream banks) and large woody debris
  • Provide alternative watering for farm stock e.g. solar pumped troughs
  • Controlling invasive non-native species
  • Enhancing 15 km of wooded riverbanks and lakeshore as biodiversity corridors

Allen tarnImprove salmonid spawning through increased access to clean spawning gravels

  • Freeze coring and analysis of spawning bed samples
  • De-silting and maintaining 600 m of compacted spawning gravels
  • Clearing discarded slate to create another 100 m of spawning gravels
  • Restoring 2 fish-passes to reopen 2 kms of clean spawning areas
  • Creating a 100 m spawning by-pass from a redundant leat

Increase Coniston Water’s reedbeds of Common reed, reduce sedimentation of Arctic charr spawning gravels and inhibit colonisation by New Zealand pygmy weed, an invasive plant species

  • Installing static and floating fencing
  • Creation of protective wave-barriers
  • Rhizome propagation and planting

Protect indigenous fish species, particularly Arctic charr, by improving the effectiveness of Tarn Hows fish screen to exclude non-indigenous species from the catchment

 If you would like to be involved in our conservation activities, please contact us through our Get Involved page